Andy Beshear’s closest allies: Who makes the Kentucky governor’s office run?

Gov. Andy Beshear is one of the most public-facing elected officials in Kentucky history.

Whether it was the daily television briefings at the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, his response to disasters in Eastern and Western Kentucky, or a deluge of events in the lead-up to his successful re-election campaign, Beshear has openly received Kentuckians’ praises and critiques.

But who does Beshear rely on behind the scenes? The answers literally sit just feet from his desk.

“His office is right there,” Beshear Deputy Chief of Staff Jonathan Smith, 37, said in an interview that took place in Chief of Staff La Tasha Buckner’s office, pointing to a door connecting Beshear’s office to hers. “... We’re in there every day.”

“Many times a day,” Buckner, 49, added. “His door is typically open. (We) communicate in real time.”

Smith’s office is connected to Buckner’s. Beshear, Buckner and Smith – three in a row at the back of the Capitol.

It is a tightly run ship. And there are no leaks, even amid the pressure of high-stakes policy battles and the 2023 re-election campaign.

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That’s been a relief for Beshear’s top political strategist, Eric Hyers.

“You watch all these other races unfold, and you see all these stories of backbiting, sniping and leaks. No one’s written that story about Beshear World because it’s a very cohesive group of folks and everybody does their jobs well. That extends to the official side,” the 39-year-old said.

“It makes all this easier when the political and official teams get along and work well together.”

Smith and Buckner have been the ones steering that ship on the governor’s official team, alongside such top Beshear administration officials as Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, Senior Adviser Rocky Adkins and State Budget Director John Hicks.

A Glasgow native, Buckner has had a long career in Frankfort but began working directly under Beshear as an assistant deputy attorney general in the mid-2010s.

Buckner has embodied many “firsts” in her current office: She was the first person to hold the general counsel position and chief of staff duties (which lasted for the first 10 months of the administration); she was the first woman and first Black person to serve as chief of staff; she also became the first Black woman to serve as general counsel.

Smith, originally from Louisville, has been with Beshear the longest of any staffer. His relationship with the governor dates back 11 years.

What do they do?

As they tell it, much of Buckner and Smith’s work is in “operationalizing” Beshear’s objectives – figuring out how to accomplish goals.

For instance, they were there when the Cabinet for Economic Development secretary gave Beshear an initial rundown on the Ford BlueOvalSK project and when Beshear explained to Ford executives why they should choose Kentucky to make the company’s record-breaking investment in the state.

Then they had to coordinate all the moving parts, from beginning to end, that come with landing such a big deal.

“It was figuring out what are the incentives that need to go along with that? How do we get a special session and bring everybody in and do (non-disclosure agreements) for large groups of people? (Then there were) the more fun aspects of it, like putting on that really huge announcement that took everybody lots of planning to do,” Buckner said.

Another highlight of Buckner’s time in the office is successfully defending COVID-19 mitigation efforts in 2020.

These initiatives are all carried out in discussion with Beshear. And in those discussions, the governor wants to be challenged by staffers.

“He takes feedback,” Buckner said. “He comes in and has an idea, we’ll kick it around and he really wants people to weigh in. He wants you to talk and say, ‘Have you thought about this? What about that?’... If people aren’t speaking up, he will say, ‘Say something. What are you thinking?’”

What format do these meetings take? Mostly ad hoc, Hyers said. That’s the mark of a good political and official team.

“I think what separates good teams from elite teams – and the greater Beshear orbit is an elite functioning team – is that because we all get along and know each other really well, we don’t need these scheduled check-ins to be aligned on things,” Hyers said. “We’re sort of always talking and always just in tune.”

“I could probably count on one hand the number of big things that we (Beshear and I) weren’t aligned on over the course of five years,” he added.

That five-year relationship almost never happened.

Hyers, a native of western Massachusetts and career Democratic political operative, had run three different gubernatorial campaigns in three different states in the previous four years before taking Beshear’s race in the lead-up to 2019.

He got convinced by the opportunity to make a big statement in an off-year election, where the national media lights generally burn brighter for lack of other races to follow. The opportunity to beat “the worst governor in the country,” as he described former Republican governor Matt Bevin, was enticing as well.

Political operatives often live a nomadic lifestyle. Now, after leading two successful campaigns and recently forming two Beshear-linked political donation groups, Hyers’ career is tied to the governor’s.

Smith, who was deputy campaign manager in 2019 with Hyers, is described by party insiders as Beshear’s right hand – a liaison between Beshear and others in the political world.

As for highlights of his time in the office, Smith mentioned his involvement in restoring voting rights for 180,000 Kentuckians with non-violent felony offenses as well as the removal of a statue of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the Capitol Rotunda. He also said both winning gubernatorial campaigns were high points.

That underscores an important part of any governor’s staff, not just Beshear’s: There is no way to completely extricate the official duties entirely from the governor’s political prospects. The governor’s sheer amount of time on TV sets statewide and visiting specific communities undoubtedly played a role in his decisive re-election – most of those events and speaking engagements were in his official capacity.

Al Cross, a longtime political observer in the state and former director of the Institute for Rural Journalism, said Smith and Buckner are some of the most “low-profile” gubernatorial lieutenants he’s seen in his decades of following Frankfort.

The “tight ship” aspect of Beshear’s office is one that almost certainly works to the governor’s political advantage, but there are drawbacks to the public, Cross said. They’re more disciplined around a single message coming from a single messenger, but the inner workings of the office are more obscure, he argued.

“The design of this administration is to have everything good come from the governor. In my experience, it’s one of the more controlling administrations in terms of information I’ve ever seen,” Cross said.

A notable exception is Buckner’s and Smith’s participation for this story, as neither have made regular public statements in the way that some in their positions have done in the past.

Beshear behind closed doors

These meetings afford the staff a closer look at Beshear. While political enemies have tried to strike a contrast between “Frankfort Andy” and “TV Andy,” Buckner says “the image is accurate because it’s who he is.”

In closed-door meetings, Buckner said Beshear is observant, and a particularly good listener to those bringing him new information. He’s also got strong political instincts.

An aspect of the campaign that Hyers attributes to Beshear: Tailoring his message to particular issues in the state. Whether it was making sure to show up for any major local economic development announcement, touting the Brent Spence Bridge’s importance to Northern Kentucky or proselytizing on the rebirth of the Eastern Kentucky economy with the widening of the Mountain Parkway – that was Beshear knowing his state.

“He also, I think, really understands that there’s a fabric of the character of many people in Kentucky – that they care about each other and want to look out for each other,” Hyers said.

The governor’s strong presence in Eastern Kentucky after historic floods racked the region was “never about him,” but his relative political successes in those counties “reflects an appreciation of that leadership.”

In some ways, the staff’s fate is tethered to Beshear’s political success – a Democrat successfully swimming upstream against a Republican-led tide – there’s been a sense of precarity throughout the staff’s time at the Capitol.

Perhaps for good reason.

While much attention was given to Beshear’s tight win over former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in 2019, Smith said he thinks often about the governor’s very first statewide election in 2015, a close, 2,200-vote win in the attorney general’s race over Western Kentucky GOP Sen. Whitney Westerfield.

“I think I’m the governor’s longest-serving staffer – I worked on that campaign – and I’m not kidding when I say I think about those 2,200 votes all the time,” Smith said.

“That is the difference between where we are now and who knows where we could be.”