The Top Race of 2023 Is Heating Up in Kentucky

With the 2024 election on the horizon, the Kentucky gubernatorial race is emerging as the premiere competition of 2023, being billed as a test of whether Democrats can once against buck partisanship to deliver a narrow victory.Kentucky’s governor, Andrew Beshear, a Democrat, is running for re-election against the GOP challenger, Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In 2019, Mr. Beshear, whose father was a popular governor, earned a narrow victory against Governor Bevin, 49.2 percent to 48.8 percent.The 2019 victory for the budding Beshear dynasty was a rare upset in a deep-red state that President Trump won by nearly 30 points in 2016 and that Mr. Trump would go on to carry by 26 points in 2020.The governor’s race, however, is being billed as the premier competition in 2023 because it will be a test of whether Mr. Beshear’s personal popularity can overcome the political winds in a state that normally supports Republicans.An associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Miles Coleman, tells the Sun that part of the hype around the election is due to the fact that “since 2003, the party that’s won the KY governorship has won the presidency the following year.”More concretely, Mr. Coleman explained that the election could be a good indicator of the status of suburban voters and other important parts of the Democratic coalition, like Black voters.“If he’s able to improve on his 2019 showing in the Cincinnati suburbs ([Beshear] won two of the three counties that border Cincinnati’s Hamilton County), that may be a sign college-educated and wealthier voters are still in the Democrats’ corner,” Mr. Coleman said.Polling, so far, suggests that Mr. Beshear is the favorite, with both Democratic- and Republican-commissioned polls showing him in the lead.A Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by Mr. Beshear’s re-election campaign found that he led Mr. Cameron 49 percent to 41 percent. A Public Opinion Strategies survey commissioned by the Republican State Leadership Commission found Mr. Beshear led Mr. Cameron 49 percent to 45 percent.The Public Policy Polling survey also gives a sense of the relative popularity of Mr. Beshear among Democrats and Republicans, finding that 63 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans approve of his performance. In terms of voting intention, 15 percent of Republicans indicated they plan to vote for Mr. Beshear at this stage.Mr. Cameron has acknowledged Mr. Beshear’s popularity in the state, but accuses Mr. Beshear of having two different personas, a “TVAndy” and a “Frankfort Andy.” Mr. Cameron also attempted to nationalize the race at Fancy Farm earlier this month during a famous political picnic.“TVAndy lies about his record on jobs, crime, and teachers. TV Andy wants you to believe he’s never heard of Joe Biden,” Mr. Cameron said.Discussions of Mr. Beshear’s popularity, though, don’t tell the whole story. Mr. Cameron has earned a powerful ally in his efforts in the form of one of the most powerful national Republicans.Earlier this month, the senior senator of Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s minority leader, stumped for Mr. Cameron at the Fancy Farm picnic, where he described defeating Mr. Beshear as the culmination of his decades-long mission to turn Kentucky completely red.At the event, Mr. McConnell recounted his time entering Kentucky politics about 40 years ago, saying, “it was me and a couple of county chairmen on the Republican side,” and on the Democrats’ side, “it was everybody else — the governor, both senators, the congressmen, legislators, everybody.”Although Mr. Cameron has Mr. McConnell on his side, the Republican efforts remain divided, with Mr. Cameron’s primary opponents, the state agricultural commissioner, Ryan Quarle,s and a former ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft, so far refusing to support Mr. Cameron.As it stands, Mr. Cameron and his allies will need to chip away at Mr. Beshear’s public image if they want to accomplish Mr. McConnell’s goal this year.To do so, Mr. Cameron has leveraged the power of his position as attorney general to ask the FBI to investigate Mr. Beshear’s campaign, which Mr. Cameron’s office alleges received suspicious campaign donations.The donations Mr. Cameron’s office is referring to were apparently from the credit card of Mayor Randall Weddle of London, Kentucky. Apparently, there were about $12,000 in donations to Mr. Beshear’s campaign and $190,000 to the state Democratic Party filed under various names other than Mr. Weddle’s. The issue was first reported by the Kentucky Lantern.Mr. Cameron has taken to calling the matter a “fiasco” on campaign stops and has touted his decision to refer the case to the FBI. Mr. Beshear’s campaign and the Democratic Party have since promised to refund the donations.Mr. Cameron’s campaign, though, has been dogged by a scandal of its own, brought by a detective in Mr. Cameron’s own office, Heather D’Hondt. She is suing the office for discrimination, hostile working conditions, and employer’s liability compensation retaliation.“The conduct that he has been engaging in has been slowly escalating to the point that I am fearful of physical violence,” Ms. D’Hondt’s lawsuit reads. She claims that her supervisor’s behavior in the office mimicked that “of an abuser in a domestic violence situation.”A political scientist at the University of Kentucky, Steve Voss, tells the Sun that none of the scandals in the race have really stuck, a factor that has diminished Mr. Cameron’s efforts to take the sheen off Mr. Beshear as a candidate.Mr. Voss did, though, flag a breakdown in busing at Jefferson County schools, which delayed the start of classes, as a new point of leverage Republicans are attempting to use against Mr. Bashear.“The Republicans are trying to use that failure as an attack against Beshear,” Mr. Voss said. “Democrats have counterpunched, saying that it’s because the Republican legislature didn’t put enough money into the public school transportation.”Mr. Voss said it’s too early to tell whether this strategy from Republicans will work. He did say the race was unusual for other reasons, namely because it appears to be less about partisanship at the moment and more about governance.“The fact that Beshear has been doing so well with voters that dislike President Biden and the Democratic Party demonstrates that voters will reward what they seek as good governmental service,” Mr. Voss said.

The Top Race of 2023 Is Heating Up in Kentucky

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