How a Democratic governor won again in deep-red Kentucky
How a Democratic governor won again in deep-red Kentucky
Eric Hyers, Gov. Andy Beshear’s campaign manager, spoke with Score about last week's victory.
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Kentuckian here. Every single down-ballot race was won by a Republican. Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, all that shit. These people weren't responding to his message, or protecting women's rights. The Republican candidate was a Black man. And Kentucky fascists are extremely racist. So they voted for the white guy, or not at all. It's really not that complicated.
Fellow Kentuckian. If I may offer a counter point, Beshear beat a white male republican incumbent in 2019 to obtain his office in the first place. So, while I agree that him winning probably isn’t the landslide victory democrats are making it out to be, I do think your view is a bit more cynical than reality.
Two reasons I’m not convinced of this idea that it’s some template for democrats
- your point about republicans winning everything else
- Kentucky isn’t as “deep red” at the local level as media would have you believe. We’ve flipped from democratic to republican governors basically every election since 1995 (possibly earlier, but I stopped looking)
Tennessee used to be somewhat of a swing state too, and has a pretty similar culture.
Then a black man became president.
Not really buying that race wasn't a primary factor anymore tbh.
Do you not remember how much everyone hated Bevin? He only beat him by around 5,000ish votes
I’m acutely aware that Bevin was massively unpopular. So?
Maybe their point is a dem might win ky only if the opponent is a black man or someone so unbelievably assholeish like bevin. Ie. It's saying more about the competition than anything beshear has done or said and offers no real lessons for Democrats otherwise.
Manchin (much as I loathe to cite him in an arguably positive way) never ran against a black guy in WV and kept winning despite his party losing every other race. Sometimes there's just a guy who gets how to win elections in his state.
Racism could be part of it, but doesn't explain how he outperformed a white woman in the primaries. Unless the voters are more sexist than racist... Which is not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Gotta be a registered Dem to vote in the Dem primaries here. Andy is very popular among the thinking population of the state, so I don't think he had a chance of getting primaried.
I'm talking about Daniel Cameron outperforming Kelly Craft.
As a fellow Kentuckian, I agree with this sentiment. A white Republican probably would have won. I don't think abortion mattered like the news thinks it did.
I do think Democrats are grooming Rocky Adkins to run after Beshear. If Beshear does a good job, Adkins can win as a Democrat. He can pull Eastern Kentucky on his name, plus the cities. So Democrats might keep the governorship for a while and that might help break the gridlock in the state. Just my two cents.