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.
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)
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.
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.
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.