I watched the Matt Bevin/Andy Beshear debate in 2019. I was not a fan of Bevin’s bravado that bordered on chauvinism. Matt reminded me too much of President Trump: Bombastic, self-aggrandizing, and overconfident. But during that debate he clearly beat Beshear. Beshear spoke in platitudes, could not answer questions with any specificity, and sounded like a broken record: “Bevin is bad, mmmkay?” While Bevin answered questions directly and with facts, Beshear would speak around issues and sounded unsure of himself. Matt Bevin truly bettered Beshear in the debate, but the damage was already done.
Bevin had already cooked his own goose. Although Bevin was elected governor in 2015, during his tenure he operated with a divisive leadership style, and he obviously forgot that he was supposed to be Governor for all Kentuckians. Bevin’s big mistake was dividing the people of the Commonwealth and flaunting it. (Sound like anyone on the national stage?)
The 2019 Kentucky gubernatorial election was not a contest between two men’s ability to lead. It was a contest between a Trumpian Governor (zing and tumult) and a Governor’s Son (golly and dull).
Jamie Ruehl grew up in Erlanger. He graduated from St. Henry District High School, earned a degree in business administration from Xavier University, served the US Army on an ROTC Commission in 2001, attaining the rank of Captain and serving overseas. Back home, he graduated from Northern Kentucky University’s Executive Leadership and Organizational Change Master’s Program in 2018. He served as a Law Enforcement Officer for 8.5 years and was inducted into the American Police Hall of Fame. He has been a staff insurance adjuster since 2019 with a large carrier headquartered in Cincinnati. He is attempting to be the best possible husband to his wife of 15 years and best possible father to their 3 children. They live in Edgewood with their two dogs. He is a life-long distance runner.
The 2019 election was not a Beshear victory, rather: an indictment of Matt Bevin’s callous responses to blocks of voters. That election foreshadowed the next year’s presidential election where voters across America by the slimmest of margins denounced President Trump’s curt leadership style. Bevin, just like Trump, had a pretty good record to run on. Both executives enjoyed a litany of good metrics because of sound conservative policies. But both executives were dividers, not uniters.
There are a few similarities between the 2019 gubernatorial election and this year’s run. First, you have an Attorney General (AG) stepping up to challenge an incumbent. Cameron has faithfully fulfilled the duties of his office and proven that he can recognize and address global issues yet stay true to his conservative Kentucky roots. Secondly, Cameron is running on a “unifier” platform, much like Andy did as the challenger in 2019. Also, both Matt Bevin and Andy Beshear made polarizing decisions during their tenure as governors that hurt their credibility with the traditionally conservative Commonwealth. Andy took advantage of those Bevin mistakes with broad campaign promises of unity and centrism. Like the Biden versus Trump running, the nasty-tongued incumbent was bested by a milquetoast candidate who promised civility.
If both Biden and Beshear’s leadership wasn’t so evidently detrimental to our nation and state respectively, it could have been comical watching a doddering old man and a governor’s son attempt to lead.
In contrast, Daniel Cameron’s campaign has walked the tightrope above the Trumpian ferociousness and maintained a polite yet stern social conservatism that has indeed unified the Commonwealth. Rarely do you see Trump supporters stand side by side with Paul supporters, much less with McConnell supporters. Cameron has collected all of them to his strong coalition. Daniel has caught the ear of our educators. He also brings with him the support of almost all law enforcement offices and Commonwealth Attorneys/County Attorneys in the state. Cameron has shown a genuine ability to see and hear people of all walks of life. Much like Beshear in 2019, Cameron has embraced the citizens of Kentucky who have been marginalized by the incumbent’s divisiveness.
Andy Beshear (like Matt Bevin and Donald Trump) quickly started pandering to his extreme political base once elected. During the election Beshear specifically appealed to Christians in his 2019 election and he openly prided himself on sending his kids to a private Christian School.
One of the telling moments early in Beshear’s governorship was his surprisingly expressed support for “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” by posting pictures with them at one of their protests. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are men in drag who protest people for their Christian beliefs. That expressed support for an extreme Left-wing group was Andy in his element and it publicly signaled his abandonment of any faux centrism he put on display during the 2019 election.
Beshear’s values align with the far Left and it’s not hard to see why Beshear valued keeping strip clubs open during the pandemic while closing churches. Where did the “unifier” he promised to be go?
Andy, like Bevin rampaged through his term choosing to disenfranchise the middle ground. Whether it’s twice vetoing income tax cuts, keeping our kids out of the classrooms for years, stopping weddings, funerals, graduations, or leaving in place two-year-old executive orders not letting summer camp employees go back to work, Beshear is out of touch with the citizens. Much like Bevin’s jaded approach towards public pension holders, Beshear brushed aside people of faith, small business owners, and parents with his continued executive overreach. That kind of leadership style causes division. People were disenfranchised by Bevin, Trump and Andy Beshear.
In any society there can be a fierce minority at the extreme end of a political spectrum that is blindly loyal to the person and or party to which they subscribe. In a previous writing I noted that Beshear’s legacy will be mired by his lack of leadership. And it is no surprise that an element of the extreme minority vehemently opposed me personally without addressing simple facts. Just like ferocious Trump supporters spouting off every chance they get, the extreme-Left acolytes use emotion to justify their rants but do not use any facts in their attacks (or logic for that matter). Somehow, our public discourse has boiled down to “whoever shouts the loudest and most often is somehow correct.”
I was hopeful that as Bevin and Trump went, so too would the uncivil political ranting. Not so, as many extreme people on both sides of the political aisle act and sound just like Trump and Bevin. If you so much as ask a question about Andy Beshear posing with Anti-Christian Drag Queens, you get labeled “intolerant.” Just by asking for clarification people cast stones instead of casting votes. It used to be “your vote was your voice.”
As of 2020, there were 3,462,152 registered voters in Kentucky. In the 2019 election, Andy garnered 709,890 votes for governor. That is up from his 479,929 votes he earned running for AG four years prior. Recently (if you look back four general election cycles), the top of the ticket yields the highest raw votes. In the same year that Andy was elected AG with about 480,000 votes (2015), Matt Bevin earned 511,374 votes for governor. Governor Stephen Beshear in 2011 had almost 100,000 more votes than Jack Conway garnered running for AG.
Interestingly, 2019 didn’t work that way. Daniel Cameron running for AG obtained 822,932 votes. There were over 113,000 votes more for AG than for the winning governor. Daniel got over 118,000 votes than Matt Bevin in the same election. That means more than 118,000 people voted for a Republican AG, but NOT for a Republican Governor. Over 118,000 people! And Andy Beshear won Governor by a mere 5,000 votes . . . over a man that was fiercely not liked because of his terse communication and leadership style. The Andy Beshear victory was more about people voting against Bevin and his divisive leadership.
There are some strong similarities between 2019 and 2023 governor races. Bevin going into the Spring of 2019 had high approval ratings, just like Beshear allegedly does today. Polling in 2019 showed Bevin and Beshear virtually tied, just like Beshear and Cameron are today. In 2019, there was a block of voters that weren’t getting a lot of attention who were extremely disenfranchised by Bevin, just like there is a very high disenfranchised block of voters that Beshear talks down to or simply ignores today.
It is interesting that Andy Beshear, like Matt Bevin, forgot that he was supposed to be a unifier. Will we see the same kind of results in 2023? A Bevin-like Andy Beshear defeated by a unifier from the AG’s office?
United We Stand.
