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Tag: Beshear

  • Meet the un-Gavin. Kentucky’s governor sees a different way to the White House

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    FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gavin Newsom was in his element, moving and shaking amid the rich and powerful in Davos.

    He scolded European leaders for supposedly cowering before President Trump.

    He drew disparaging notice during a presidential rant and captured headlines after being blocked from delivering a high-profile speech, allegedly at the behest of the White House.

    All the while, another governor and Democratic presidential prospect was mixing and mingling in the rarefied Swiss air — though you probably wouldn’t know it.

    Flying far below the heat-seeking radar, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear leaned into the role of economic ambassador, focusing on job creation and other nutsy, boltsy stuff that doesn’t grab much notice in today’s performative political environment.

    Like Newsom, Beshear is running-but-not-exactly-running for president. He didn’t set out to offer a stark contrast to California’s governor, the putative 2028 Democratic front-runner. But he’s doing so just the same.

    Want someone who’ll match Trump insult for insult, over-the-top meme for over-the-top meme and howl whenever the president commits some new outrage? Look to Sacramento, not Frankfort.

    “I think by the time we reach 2028, our Democratic voters are gonna be worn out,” Beshear said during a conversation in his state’s snowy capital. “They’re gonna be worn out by Trump, and they’re gonna be worn out by Democrats who respond to Trump like Trump. And they’re gonna want some stability in their lives.”

    Every candidate enters a contest with a backstory and a record, which is condensed to a summary that serves as calling card, strategic foundation and a rationale for their run.

    Here’s Andy Beshear’s: He’s the popular two-term governor of a red state that three times voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

    He is fluent in the language of faith, well-liked by the kind of rural voters who have abandoned Democrats in droves and, at age 48, offers a fresh face and relative youth in a party that many voters have come to see as old and ossified.

    The fact he’s from the South, where Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton emerged the last time Democrats experienced this kind of existential freak-out, also doesn’t hurt.

    Beshear’s not-yet-candidacy, still in the fledgling phase, offers a mix of aspiration and admonition.

    Democrats, he said, need to talk more like regular people. Addiction, not substance use disorder. Hunger, not food assistance.

    And, he suggested, they need to focus more on things regular people care about: jobs, healthcare, public safety, public education. Things that aren’t theoretical or abstract but materially affect their daily lives, like the costs of electricity, car insurance and groceries.

    “I think the most important thing we should have learned from 2024 is [Democratic voters are] gonna be looking for somebody that can help them pay that next bill,” Beshear said.

    He was seated in the Old Governor’s Mansion, now a historic site and Beshear’s temporary office while the nearby Capitol undergoes a years-long renovation.

    The red-brick residence, built in the Federal style and completed in 1798, was Beshear’s home from age 6 to 10 when his father, Steve, lived there while serving as lieutenant governor. (Steve Beshear went on to serve two terms as the state’s chief executive, building a brand and a brand name that helped Andy win his first public office, attorney general, in 2015.)

    It was 9 degrees outside. Icicles hung from the eaves and snowplows navigated Frankfort’s narrow, winding streets after an unusually cold winter blast.

    Inside, Beshear was seated before an unlit fireplace, legs crossed, shirt collar unbuttoned, looking like the pleasantly unassuming Dad in a store-bought picture frame.

    He bragged a bit, touting Kentucky’s economic success under his watch. He spoke of his religiosity — his grandfather and great-grandfather were Baptist preachers — and talked at length about the optimism, a political rarity these days, that undergirds his vision for the country.

    “I think the American people feel like the pendulum swung too far in the Biden administration. Now they feel it’s swung way too far during the Trump administration,” Beshear said. “What they want is for it to stop swinging.”

    He went on. “Most people when they wake up aren’t thinking about politics. They’re thinking about their job, their next doctor’s appointment, the roads and bridges they drive, the school they drop their kids off at, and whether they feel safe in their community.

    “And I think they desperately want someone that can move the country, not right or left ideologically, but actually forward in those areas. And that’s how I think we heal.”

    Beshear doesn’t shy from his Democratic pedigree, or stray from much of the party’s orthodoxy.

    Seeking reelection in 2023, he seized on the abortion issue and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade to batter and best his Republican opponent.

    He’s walked the picket line with striking auto workers, signed an executive order making Juneteenth a state holiday and routinely vetoed anti-gay legislation, becoming the first Kentucky governor to attend an LGBTQ+ celebration in the Capitol Rotunda.

    “Discrimination against our LGBTQ+ community is unacceptable,” he told an audience. “It holds us back and, in my Kentucky accent, it ain’t right.”

    For all of that, Beshear doesn’t shrink from taking on Trump, which, essentially, has become a job requirement for any Democratic officeholder wishing to remain a Democratic officeholder.

    After the president’s rambling Davos address, Beshear called Trump’s remarks “dangerous, disrespectful and unhinged.”

    “From insulting our allies to telling struggling Americans that he’s fixed inflation and the economy is amazing, the President is hurting both our families’ financial security and our national security,” Beshear posted on social media. “Oh, and Greenland is so important he’s calling it Iceland.”

    But Beshear hasn’t turned Trump-bashing into a 24/7 vocation, or a weight-lifting contest where the winner is the critic wielding the heaviest bludgeon.

    “I stand up to him in the way that I think a Democratic governor of Kentucky should. When he’s doing things that hurt my state, I speak out,” Beshear said. “I filed 20 lawsuits, I think, and we’ve won almost all of them, bringing dollars they were trying to stop from flowing into Kentucky.

    “But,” he added, “when he does something positive for Kentucky, I also say that too, because that’s what our people expect.”

    Asked about the towel-snapping Newsom and his dedicated staff of Trump trollers, Beshear defended California’s governor — or, at least, passed on the chance to get in a dig.

    “Gavin’s in a very different situation than I’m in. I mean, he has the president attacking him and his state just about every day,” Beshear said. “So I don’t want to be critical of an approach from somebody that’s in a very different spot.

    “But the approach also has to be unique to you. For me, I bring people together. We’ve been able to do that in this state. That’s my approach. And in the end, I’ve gotta stay true to who I am.”

    And when — or make that if — both Newsom and Beshear launch a formal bid for president, they’ll present Democratic voters a clear choice.

    Not just between two differing personalities. Also two considerably different approaches to politics and winning back the White House.

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    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • The Democrats’ Most Surprising Southern Foothold

    The Democrats’ Most Surprising Southern Foothold

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    The GOP controls nearly everything in Kentucky, a state that Donald Trump carried by 26 points in 2020. Republicans hold both U.S. Senate seats and five of Kentucky’s six House seats; they dominate both chambers of the state legislature.

    What Republicans don’t occupy is Kentucky’s most powerful post. The state’s governor is Andy Beshear, a Democrat elected in 2019 who is hoping to win a second term tomorrow. Operatives in both parties think he might, but the governor’s in a close race with his Republican opponent, Daniel Cameron, the state’s 37-year-old attorney general. Whether Beshear can stave him off will determine if Democrats maintain one of their most surprising footholds in southern politics.

    Beshear, 45, owes his success in a deep-red state to a combination of competent governance, political good fortune, and family lineage. His father, Steve, was a popular two-term governor who governed as a moderate and won the admiration of fellow Democrats for implementing the Affordable Care Act in the face of conservative opposition. The Republican governor whom Andy Beshear defeated in 2019, Matt Bevin, was widely disliked, even by many in his own party. Soon after taking office, Beshear earned praise for his steady leadership during the coronavirus pandemic and then later in his tenure during a series of natural catastrophes—deadly tornadoes, historic flooding, and ice storms. The crises have made the governor a near-constant presence on local news in the state, where allies and opponents alike usually refer to him by his first name. “I joke that Andy Beshear has 150 percent name ID” in Kentucky, Representative Morgan McGarvey, the lone Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, told me. “It’s because everybody knows who he is. And they actually know him.”

    Major economic-development and infrastructure projects have also boosted the governor’s reelection bid—Beshear has taken advantage of billions in federal dollars that have flowed to Kentucky from legislation signed by President Joe Biden and backed by the state’s most powerful Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell.

    Cameron is a onetime McConnell protégé who would be the state’s first Black governor if elected. In the campaign’s closing weeks, Cameron has touted an endorsement by Trump and tried to tie Beshear to Biden, who is deeply unpopular in Kentucky. The governor has endorsed Biden’s reelection, though he’s generally kept his distance from the president. At the start of one debate, Beshear, who had recently signed legislation legalizing sports gambling, “wagered” that Cameron would mention Biden’s name at least 16 times in their hour together onstage. Cameron was either unfazed or unable to improvise: He mentioned Biden’s name four times in the next 90 seconds.

    Nationalizing the governor’s race is probably Cameron’s smartest bet in a state like Kentucky. But even Republicans concede that Beshear has done a good job of building a distinct brand during the past four years. “He ended up being able to operate in some nonideological arenas—the tornadoes, the floods, even COVID while it was going on,” Scott Jennings, a Republican consultant in Kentucky, told me. As they did for governors in most states, televised briefings during the pandemic allowed Beshear to connect with his constituents on a daily basis for weeks. The dynamic generally helped Republican leaders in blue states, such as Phil Scott in Vermont, and vice versa in Kentucky. “Anytime you come into people’s lives like that every day during an unusual situation, it does have an impact,” Jennings said. “You seem more familiar than the average politician that you see every now and again.” Since the beginning of 2020, just one governor—Democrat Steve Sisolak in Nevada—has lost a reelection bid.

    Read: America’s bluest state loves its Republican governor

    Beshear has benefitted from incumbency in other ways as well. He’s raised and spent far more money than Cameron, which allows him to blanket the state in ads both positive and negative. He’s used ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings to tout job-creating projects. In September, Beshear placed the state’s first legal sports bet at the Churchill Downs Racetrack, a launch that was timed explicitly for the start of football season and implicitly for the start of his reelection campaign.

    Among the issues Beshear has prioritized is abortion, a departure for a Democrat in a culturally conservative southern state. The procedure has been illegal in Kentucky since the overturning of Roe v. Wade triggered a statewide ban. But Democrats sensed a political opening last year after Kentucky voters rejected an amendment that would have stipulated that the state constitution did not protect abortion rights. The vote suggested that in Kentucky, as in other red states, such as Kansas, abortion rights have bipartisan support. “It’s a huge advantage for Andy,” former Representative John Yarmuth, a Democrat who served for eight terms in the House before retiring last year, told me. “It has become a voting issue for the pro-choice side. It generates turnout and it moves some voters.”

    One of Beshear’s TV ads features a woman who was raped by her stepfather at age 12 and who criticizes Cameron for his support of Kentucky’s abortion ban, which contains no exceptions for rape or incest. “I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none,” the woman says. After the ad began running, Cameron said that if the legislature presented him with a bill adding exceptions to the state’s abortion ban, he would sign it.

    For Cameron, the Republican who has the best chance of winning him votes is Trump. The former president released a recorded endorsement last week, but he has not come to Kentucky to campaign for the attorney general. “We would accept any and all visitors to help get the vote out,” Sean Southard, a spokesperson for Cameron, told me when I asked whether the campaign had wanted a Trump rally.

    What role, if any, race might play in the outcome is also a question mark. Cameron denounced a pair of ads by the Beshear-backing Black Voters Matter Action PAC that refer to him as “Uncle Daniel Cameron” and place his image alongside that of Samuel L. Jackson’s character from Django Unchained. “All skinfolk ain’t kinfolk,” a narrator says in a radio ad, urging a vote for Beshear, who is white.

    Silas House: A warning from a Democrat in a red state

    To Republicans, Beshear is something of an accidental governor. After winning his race for attorney general in 2015 by slightly more than 2,000 votes, he defeated Bevin four years later by a margin nearly as minuscule (about 5,000 votes). The GOP-controlled legislature drives policy and can override his veto with a simple majority. “The Republican supermajorities have essentially stuffed him in a locker,” Jennings said. But, he argued, their dominance ultimately helps Beshear politically because they’ve prevented him from building a record to the left of where Kentucky voters want to go. “If left to his own devices, he’d be far more liberal on policy,” Jennings said. “In some ways, they save him from himself.”

    As entrenched as they are in Kentucky’s legislature and congressional delegation, Republicans have struggled to win, and keep, the governorship. They’ve held the top job for just three four-year terms in the past eight decades, and both of their recent winners, Bevin and Ernie Fletcher, lost bids for reelection (each time to a Beshear). “What’s clear is that people view the governor differently,” McGarvey told me.

    Both Republicans and Democrats I spoke with told me that they believed the GOP’s strength throughout the state would eventually extend to the governor’s office. Whether that happens tomorrow or in another four years is less clear. Private polls show Beshear with a small but not insurmountable lead, according to operatives in both parties who described them on the condition of anonymity. Public surveys have been limited, but they show a tightening race as well. Democrats close to the Beshear campaign told me that although they felt good about the race, a Cameron victory would not surprise them given the GOP’s overall advantage.

    Yarmuth was a bit more confident. Sensing a lack of enthusiasm on the Republican side, he held out hope for a more convincing Beshear win that might even help Democrats in down-ballot races. But he, too, was skeptical that Democrats would be able to maintain their unlikely grip on Kentucky’s governorship much longer. “I would bet,” the former representative told me, “that it’ll be hard for a Democrat past Andy.”

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    Russell Berman

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