Where’s Kentucky’s governor these days?

Former President Joe Biden highlighted harsh economic realities facing American families under President Donald Trump. And Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear pitched a recipe for helping Democrats win in deep-red states. 

Both headliners for the Nebraska Democrats’ top annual fundraiser Friday rallied a downtown Hilton crowd of 630 people headed into next year’s midterm elections, in which the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District could play a crucial role. Another 220 watched from an overflow area.

Friday was Biden’s first public speaking event since dropping out of the 2024 presidential campaign under fire from some in the party about his electability following a shaky debate performance against Trump.

I like Andy, but it’s time to be cynical.

The recipe he’s pitching will only work in other red states if Democrats have the same kind of opponents Andy did.

Andy beat Matt Bevin in 2019. Joe Gerth at the Courier-Journal wrote this the day after the vote:

There will be plenty of time to dance on the grave of the nastiest man ever to hold the governor’s office in Kentucky — one who lied because he could even when there was incontrovertible evidence he was doing so, one who made enemies out of political friends, one who made hated rivals out of political foes, and made Democratic voters out of staunch Republicans.

But on the morning after Matt Bevin’s political career in Kentucky came to a crushing end with what appears to be a 5,200-vote loss to the scion of the family he belittled, investigated and in the nastiest of all moves removed the family matriarch’s name from a building on the state Capitol campus, let’s hope politicians are learning.

Let’s make one thing crystal clear:

Matt Bevin didn’t lose because his policies are out of step with Kentucky voters. He didn’t lose because in his four years, he didn’t govern as he promised when elected in 2015. He didn’t lose because of scandal.

Matt Bevin lost because he is a jerk.

Now, that was putting it nicely, because I clearly remember that after Bevin lost, a high-ranking Kentucky Republican had a more concise way of explaining the result: “It was a choice between a Democrat and an asshole.” (I really wish I could find that quote. I clearly remember reading it, but it seems to have been scrubbed from the Internet. If anyone recalls it, please drop a link in the comments.)

Others also noted that Bevin lost because he was an odious scumbag.

But then in 2023, Andy beat Daniel Cameron. As the Atlantic put it:

What Republicans don’t occupy—and won’t for the next four years—is Kentucky’s most powerful post. The state’s governor is Andy Beshear, a Democrat elected in 2019 who won a second term tonight. Beshear defeated Daniel Cameron, the state’s 37-year-old Republican attorney general, allowing Democrats to 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.

That’s nice, but that’s hitting every corporate media talking point and ignoring one key factor for a deep red state.

Kentucky’s population is 84 percent White. Daniel Cameron is Black. Let’s add to that: Cameron is in a mixed-race marriage. That doesn’t fly in a rural state where MAGA racism, xenophobia and ignorance is a feature, not a bug. (Before we go on, I want to make this clear: I’m not criticizing Cameron’s marriage. I’m in a mixed-race marriage, as well. We’ll be celebrating our 38th anniversary next year. But I know that out in the sticks, that kind of union is slightly less hated than gay marriage.)

Andy beat Cameron by five percentage points in 2023. But Andy beat Bevin, a bottom feeder, by a minuscule 0.6 percentage point in 2019.

It’s certain Andy did an extraordinary job as governor in his first term. But let’s look at more numbers.

In 2024, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by more than 30 percentage points. An overwhelming number of Kentucky voters were fully convinced a corrupt, rapist, pedophile felon was a better choice than a person who put corrupt, rapist, pedophile felons in jail. This was even though everyone who voted in 2024 was alive during the Orange Menace’s first term, which was filled with corruption and grift, which saw the economy sink into the toilet, which was highlighted by not one, but two impeachments, and which left this result from the Covid-19 plague:

Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic. The Commission determined that 40% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had the U.S. only had the same Covid-19 death rates as those of other Group of Seven (G7) nations, namely Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

If Andy had been running against a White Republican, I have no doubt his margin of victory wouldn’t have been five points. I think he would have won by a Bevin margin, and it could even have been a coin toss.

So, if anything, Andy’s recipe for helping Democrats win in deep-red states should be “get the GOP to put an asshole, or even better, a minority that MAGAts will hate, on their ballots.” 

I don’t like writing that, but I deal with reality.