It was Jimmy Stewart, in the role of the beleaguered Sen Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s renowned film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” who first offered up the idea that “Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, on the verge of taking the oath for his second four-year term with an eye, perhaps, on bigger game, is about to be tested on the principle voiced by the idealistic Jefferson Smith. He is the head of a Democratic Party that is a corpse of its former self, morphing in what seemed to be a staggeringly short period of time of time from king of the hill into a rolling clown show.
The job of resuscitating that battered and bruise cadaver is on Beshear’s shoulders. The question remains whether he will assume the responsibility.
The numbers don’t lie. Last year it was announced, for the first time in history, the state featured more registered Republicans than Democrats. And the gap is growing. As of June 30, 2022, Republicans accounted for 45.19 percent of the state’s registered voters, compared to 45.12 for the Democrats. Now, according to the Secretary of State’s office, registered Republicans comprise 46 percent of the state’s total registered voters compared to 43.7 percent for the Democrats.
No Democrat, other than Beshear, has won a statewide election in eight years. Last November, the Democrat who fared the best on the ticket besides Beshear was Michael Bowman, the party’s nominee for state treasurer, who managed an anemic 42.8 percent of the vote.
Republicans hold an 80-20 advantage in the state House of Representatives and a 31-7 edge in the Senate.
It’s worse on the federal side. Both of the Commonwealth’s senators are Republican, a status the party has held for 24 years. The GOP holds five of the state’s six House seats, the lone Democrat being Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who represents Louisville in the Third Congressional District.
Recent presidential results are downright chilling for the Democrats. Former, and, perhaps, future President Donald J. Trump carried the state with 62.5 percent in 2016 and 62 percent in 2020. The last Democrat to carry the Bluegrass State was former President Bill Clinton, narrowly, in 1996.
That’s the sort of record that rivals the 2017 Cleveland Brown, who went 0-16, for futility. And the future isn’t exactly rosy. The party seems to have no bench, has produced a dearth of quality candidates and the political plague known as Trumpism remains on the rise.
Now that’s what you call a lost cause.
The curious thing is that Kentucky Democrats once upon a time held a similar advantage over Republicans and it wasn’t all that long ago. In 1987, for instance, Republicans had one helluva time just coming up with a candidate to oppose Wallace Wilkinson, the Democrat’s gubernatorial nominee, finally settling on John Harper, a state legislator from Shepherdsville, as good and decent a man as you’re ever going to find but who was terribly ill-suited to wage a statewide campaign. Harper lost by just shy of 30 points to a college book store owner who had never run for public office before.
That same year, just by means of comparison, Sen. Wendell Ford, D-Owensboro, won re-election with 74 percent of the vote over Republican Jackson Andrews. Democrats continued to dominate the state legislature, with the party holding a 22-9 advantage in the state Senate and 73-27 edge in the House. As late as 2010, Democrats held 65 seats in the lower chamber.
Between 1947 and 2003, the commonwealth managed to elect one Republican governor – Louie Nunn in 1967.
During the latter half of the 20th Century and even before, Kentucky produced legendary Democratic office holders like Happy Chandler, Vice President Alben Barkley, Ford and estimable congress members like Carl Perkins from the eastern mountains and Bill Natcher out west. Not anymore.
Present day Democrats are probably in worse shape than Republicans were circa 1988. The GOP has traditionally at least held its own in federal elections, sending folks like John Sherman Cooper, Thruston Morton and Marlow Cook to the Senate. In 1988 the party held three of the Commonwealth’s seven House seats.
Regardless, Republican state house results during the period were miserable.
A hint of the GOP rise and the Democratic decline may have come as early as 1978 when Republican Larry Hopkins, of Lexington, defeated Democrat Tom Easterly, of Frankfort, in the Sixth Congressional District, a seat that had been held by Democrats for 46 years.
But the real turnaround came in 1984 when Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, now the Senate Republican leader, with the aid of television guru Roger Ailes, upset Sen. Walter “Dee” Huddleston, D-Elizabethtown, who was seeking a third six-year term.
McConnell introduced a new campaign style to Kentucky politics, through the aggressive use of television, primarily relying on negative ads, to get his point across. It worked then and it works now – McConnell is in his 38th year in the upper chamber.
For better or worse, McConnell seat about the task of stimulating the Kentucky Republican Party, concentrating on fundraising, television, candidate recruitment while developing a talented, devoted staff.
Even so, turning things around took longer than you might think. For years thereafter Democrats maintained control of the legislature and the governorship. In 1985, when he assumed office, Democrats held a 28-10 advantage in the state Senate and 74-26 edge in the House. Ten years later it was 24-14 in the Senate and 71-29 in the House.
The worm began to turn in McConnell’s direction in 1994. Natcher, of Bowling Green, who held the state’s Second Congressional District seat for 41 years, died in office, leading to a special election. Democrats, who had held the seat since 1865, offered Joe Prather, of Vine Grove, a veteran politician who previously served as president of the state Senate, while, in a seeming mismatch the Republicans nominated Ron Lewis, of Cecilia.
Sensing an opportunity, McConnell’s organization stepped on the accelerator, bringing in money and Republican support. Lewis, stunningly, defeated Prather by 10 points. He then beat one time Owensboro Mayor David Atkisson to fill the full two-year term. Lewis won against all odds and served 10 years.
The victory provided the Republicans with obvious momentum but the turnaround still was not immediate. Thanks to a changing political culture and divisions within the Democratic Party that led a group of renegade state Senators to form a weird coalition with Republicans in 1997, the GOP gained full control of the upper chamber in 2000. The House took a bit longer, with it finally sliding toward the Republicans in 2017.
After Nunn in 1967, Republicans finally won the governorship again 36 years later in 2003 when Rep. Ernie Fletcher, of Lexington, defeated state Attorney General Ben Chandler, Happy’s grandson. Another Republican, Matt Bevin, assumed the office in 2015.
The only entity standing between the Republicans and complete domination is the – and you’ll forgive the term – Beshear Dynasty. Steve Beshear, lieutenant governor from 1983-1987 who lost a Senate race to McConnell and had been out of politics for a while, stopped Fletcher from serving a second term and served for eight years. His son, Andy, the attorney general similarly kept Bevin from a second term.
Not exactly the Kennedys but close enough by Kentucky standards.
So, here’s where Andy comes in, if he chooses, to nursemaid an ailing Kentucky Democratic Party.
While Beshear has proved a popular vote-getter he hasn’t exactly provided much political capital to aid other Democratic office seekers. That’s understandable given he was running for the top office in a transformed Republican state.
Now it’s different. He can’t seek re-election. He has already ruled out a campaign to run for the Senate seat held by McConnell, which comes up in 2026. His option, besides retiring to some law firm and letting the cash roll in, is running for the big kahuna, likely to come up in 2028, unless Trump returns to office and the democracy is torn asunder.
What he can begin to do is rebuild the Democratic Party following a gameplan similar to the one employed by McConnell. There are openings. Beshear defeated Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron at least in part on the issue of abortion. And Cameron found no traction with his anti-trans rhetoric. The Kentucky electorate is, indeed, fairly conservative. But it carries an antipathy toward office seekers who are seen as punching down, which is a hole Cameron tumbled.
The Republicans in charge have also initiated a campaign to weaken, if not destroy, the public school system, which should certainly motivate parents interested in their children’s education and teachers who live in every county in the state.
Democrats maintain a foothold in the state’s two largest urban areas, Louisville and Lexington, and seems to, surprisingly, be making headway in Northern Kentucky, especially in Kenton County, the third most populated county in the commonwealth. Other relatively large counties, Daviess, Franklin and Warren, also swung his way.
Beshear also showed progress in rural counties, according to an analysis by The Daily Yonder, which determined that he received 43.3 percent of the rural vote, a jump of 5.9 percent over the 40.9 percent he received in 2019.
Then there’s some perceived anecdotal evidence that upcoming generations are not as conservative as their elders, especially when it comes to social issues, a factor that could provide Democrats with opportunities.
Beshear, should he choose over the next few years to enter this fight, will face a lost cause more perilous than the one assumed by McConnell almost 40 years ago. It will take money, plenty of it, technological acuity, locating viable candidates and, mostly, time. It took the Republicans decades to reach this stage.
Beshear, certainly at the outset, will lose more than he wins.
But he’s the only one with the authority to do it.
Amen!