Alleged China ties stymie factory project; Breonna Taylor’s mother campaigns against Cameron | Trail to ’23

This is part of an occasional Herald-Leader series, Trail to ‘23, to catch readers up on all the latest from this year’s Kentucky elections, most notably the governor’s race. There are about five months until the Nov. 7 General Election in which Kentuckians will decide the commonwealth’s next governor: incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear or Republican challenger Daniel Cameron.

One of the central planks on Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection platform is economic development, specifically the amount of big projects that Kentucky has landed during his tenure. But on Monday, a wrench got thrown in one of the often touted projects.

Alleged ties to China caused both the federal and state government to pull back from commitments to a proposed electric vehicle battery factory in Hopkinsville. The company, Texas-based Microvast, acknowledged that there may be some “timing impact” as a result of the U.S. Department of Energy rejecting a preliminarily awarded $200 million grant and Kentucky following suit by pausing $21 million in planned incentives.

According to the Associated Press, a Republican U.S. Senator claimed that Microvast’s CEO had “bragged to Chinese media about Microvast’s strong ties to the People’s Republic of China.″ Microvast has disputed these claims.

Beshear’s office stated that the project was an estimated investment of a $504 million, and would create 562 full-time jobs in the Hopkinsville area near the Tennessee border.

“As these agreements are performance-based in nature, no state funding has been issued to date in connection with this project,” a spokesman for the Cabinet for Economic Development told the the Herald-Leader. “Additionally, no further action will be taken related to tax incentives until the company provides further information about the DOE’s decision to rescind funding to the satisfaction of our Cabinet.”

Republicans took a moment to criticize the administration for the ordeal, calling the governor “Beijing Beshear.”

“Beijing Beshear didn’t do his homework before offering a sweetheart deal to a Chinese battery plant. Despite the plant’s well-known connections with the Chinese Communist Party and its history of violating the law, Beijing Beshear didn’t care: he gave them millions in tax incentives,” Republican Party of Kentucky spokesman Sean Southard said in a statement.

Law enforcement endorsements

Gubernatorial candidates on both sides of the aisle have worked hard to court the support of law enforcement in their campaigns.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who won the Republican nomination for governor in a landslide victory over well-funded competition, worked in the primary to court and receive the endorsements of law enforcement officials. Early in the primary campaign, Cameron’s team announced the endorsement of over 100 law enforcement officials across the state.

Now Beshear’s camp is taking a bite at that apple. Thirty-five law enforcement officials were set to endorse the sitting governor at a press conference at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday afternoon. Two Democratic sheriffs, one from Floyd County and the other from Cameron’s native Hardin County, are chairing the group Law Enforcement for Beshear.

That state Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has not yet endorsed in the race. Ryan Straw, FOP Vice President & Governmental Affairs Director, told the Herald-Leader that the organization plans to endorse and will vote on the matter in August.

While all that is playing out, the two sides are both trying to attack each other through the lens of law and order. Cameron has tried to place blame on Beshear for crime rates in Kentucky. Cameron, the state’s top law enforcement official, has said that he’s not responsible.

Kentucky’s overall violent crime rate ranks relatively low compared to the rest of the country, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, though it rose faster than the national average in 2020. Homicides in big cities like Louisville, as is the case in much of the rest of the country, rose to historic highs in 2021 but have tapered off since then.

Beshear’s team and the Kentucky Democratic Party (KDP) have been laser-focused thus far on tying Cameron to the highly controversial pardons of former Republican governor Matt Bevin. Some attorneys from Bevin’s office while the pardons were carried out transitioned over to Cameron’s office following Bevin’s loss and Cameron’s win in 2019.

The KDP has released statements grilling Cameron on the fact that he did not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the pardons, although Cameron did ask the FBI to investigate the pardons shortly after the election.

“The people of Kentucky deserve to know: why has Cameron failed to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Matt Bevin’s heinous pardons of murderers and child rapists?”

When asked about this at an event, Cameron pointed out that now-Democratic Congressman Morgan McGarvey “praised” his decision to ask the FBI to investigate at the time.

Cameron’s camp is focused on Beshear’s pardons and sentence commutations, claiming that he “coddles criminals.”

“Andy Beshear coddles criminals, and Daniel Cameron does not,” Southard said. “In his first year in office, Andy Beshear released nearly 2,000 criminals. Since then, a third of the Governor’s Getaways have been charged with felonies. Crime is bad enough without Andy’s help.”

The Democrats hit back, saying Cameron was trying to “score political points against Andy Beshear for following pandemic policy from the Trump Administration.”

“During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, just as Trump’s Department of Justice did, Governor Andy Beshear arranged for the compassionate release of non-violent offenders nearing the end of their sentences to reduce transmission of the deadly virus,” the party said in a statement.

Breonna Taylor’s mother campaigns against Cameron

This week, on what would have been Breonna Taylor’s 30th birthday, Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer joined local and national activists in campaigning against Cameron.

Palmer has been a consistent voice in alleging that Cameron mishandled the investigation following the 2020 police killing of Taylor, which ignited protest in Louisville, across the state and across the nation. None of the three officers who fired at Taylor where charged in her death.

Shameika Parrish-Wright, an activist and current candidate for Louisville Metro Council, said that Cameron didn’t do the right thing in 2020 and shouldn’t be elected governor in 2023.

“When you don’t do your job, you get fired. You don’t get rewarded. We cannot reward Daniel Cameron as governor,” Parrish-Wright said.

She joined other local organizers and Until Freedom, a national social justice organization, in announcing a statewide effort to register new voters and drive turnout.

RPK calls Beshear “irrelevant”

The GOP-led legislature has panned Beshear as irrelevant to the state’s lawmaking process for a long time – and they have a point, given that their supermajorities in both legislative chambers allow them to override any veto if at least 65% of the GOP caucuses agree.

Now, the Republican Party of Kentucky is taking up the mantle of hitting Beshear on his “irrelevance,” and the fact that he’s both criticized Republican budgets but touted the health of the state’s coffers.

“First Andy blames, then he takes all the credit. He’s consistently bullied Republicans for our strong fiscal policy, and now he wants to pretend he’s responsible. It’s just downright dishonest,” the party tweeted out.

On the surplus, it’s possible that neither legislative Republicans or Beshear can really take much credit. States across the country are seeing massive budget surpluses, largely due recent influxes of federal cash and inflation.

Meanwhile, Beshear has rebuffed irrelevancy criticisms by pointing to his public push for the legislature to legalize both sports betting and medical marijuana, which it did during this year’s session.

Carmack reaction

Earlier this week, Cameron’s campaign announced it was adding one of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, R-KY, closest associates in a “senior management role.”

It’s unclear exactly what Carmack will be doing for Cameron, though he left his gig as McConnell’s chief of staff to take the role. Contrary to initial reporting from POLITICO, Carmack is not the campaign manager. A Republican Party spokesperson working communications for the Cameron campaign has not indicated that Gus Herbert, the campaign manager during the primary, will be leaving that role and has not elaborated on what exactly the “senior management role” entails.

Sam Newton, communications director for the Democratic Governors Association, said it was indicative of McConnell’s lasting influence on Cameron.

“Mitch McConnell is now trying to bail out his #1 crony Daniel Cameron by sending his flailing campaign a babysitter,” Newton tweeted.

Beshear’s campaign piled on as well.

“This news comes as no shock. Cameron is McConnell’s protégé — he’s even said he would campaign with Cameron,” the campaign sent in an email to supporters. “With his own chief of staff joining Cameron’s team, McConnell’s takeover of the Cameron campaign is complete.”

There’s reason to believe that tying Cameron to McConnell might be an effective political strategy, as . However, Cameron’s Trump endorsement – Trump and McConnell infamously don’t like each other – served as cover for some of that criticism during the GOP primary, as some ‘anti-establishment’ figures endorsed him.