Cameron unveils crime plan; no LG announcement yet. ‘Republicans for Beshear.’ | 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 fewer than six months until the November 7 general election in which Kentuckians will decide the commonwealth’s next governor: incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear or Republican challenger Daniel Cameron.

The Republican Governors Association (RGA) is going after Beshear – and hard.

Leading a commercial with a clip of Democratic President Joe Biden saying “there’s no such thing as someone else’s child,” the RGA-backed PAC Kentucky Values has a commercial tying Beshear to what conservatives have cast as a Democratic-led “war on parents.”

The ad highlights several social wedge issues on which it casts Beshear as too progressive: abortion and school involvement in psychological treatment and gender transition surgery.

The ad closes with a simple message: “Andy Beshear, putting liberal politics over parents.”

Another ad – this one from Bluegrass Freedom Action, which spent in favor of Cameron during the crowded GOP primary – skewers Beshear for appointing several Democrats to the Kentucky Board of Education and releasing prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic. It ends with a shot of Beshear flanked by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

It’s probably safe to expect more of the national conservative hot-topic issues to get highlighted by Cameron and his allies while Beshear focuses on local issues, at least according to one expert. In an interview with Kentucky journalist and Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr., managing editor of Saboto’s Crystal Ball Kyle Kondik said this is just what you’d expect given Kentucky’s recent Republican leanings.

“It’s this classic nationalization versus localization strategy. When you’re on the wrong side of the partisanship in a given place, you localize. When you’re on the right side, you nationalize,” Kondik said.

Kondik’s organization has rated the race as “leaning” towards Beshear, but they were wrong on the last two Kentucky gubernatorial races, failing to predict Beshear’s 2019 win and Democrat Jack Conway’s loss to former governor Matt Bevin in 2015.

Cameron-Deters-Massie continues

U.S. Representative Thomas Massie got his way in a recent tiff with Daniel Cameron over Cameron’s planned attendance at Freedom Fest, a popular Northern Kentucky conservative rally hosted by Cameron’s former primary opponent and Massie’s likely future one Eric Deters.

In reporting on Deters’ racist comments and Massie’s continued calls for Cameron to forego attending the event, the Herald-Leader reached out to the Cameron campaign for comment last Friday. The campaign responded on Sunday that it’s “going to be doing other campaign events that day in another region of the state.”

Massie – who argued that Deters’ support in the Northern Kentucky region is largely a mirage and that Cameron’s appearance would have garnered significant negative national attention – applauded the decision.

Though the timing could mean that Deters’ comments played a part in the Cameron decision, Cameron’s response to repeated questions on Tuesday didn’t confirm that. When asked if Deters’ offensive words were the reason he pulled out of Freedom Fest or if he condemned the comments, Cameron did not answer directly.

Beshear threw some fuel on the fire on Thursday at his weekly press conference when, unprompted, he condemned Deters’ words and said that Massie was “right” to call him out on the matter.

He also took an implicit dig at Cameron, stating that it “ought to be a pretty easy call for anyone in public service” to denounce Deters’ language.

‘Republicans for Beshear?’

Compared to Cameron’s campaign – which, despite winning the primary in landslide fashion, had to unload resources to fend off former ambassador Kelly Craft and Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles – Beshear and PACs supporting him didn’t have to spend much at all before the primary election ended.

So, he’s had more time to use his own campaign to put out a positive message to Kentucky voters. One of those messages was highlighted by a Republican.

Jim, a Republican small business owner, narrates an ad on the air touting Beshear’s record on the economy. He didn’t vote for Beshear in 2019, he said. The campaign declined to further identify the man in the ad.

“The wages are up because the jobs are up. He’s getting things done, and that’s what matters. Beshear has been great for business,” he says.

In 2022, a notable group called ‘Democrats for Dieruf’ formed to support Louisville GOP mayoral candidate Bill Dieruf . Don’t be shocked if a ‘Democrats for Daniel’ group crops up soon.

Children sleeping on floor of cabinet office

The Courier-Journal has been on top of a story about children in state custody sleeping on the floors of a state agency’s downtown Louisville office.

That has prompted calls from Republican lawmakers and Cameron for change.

Beshear said the situation was not acceptable in a recent press conference, and that some children come into the state’s custody at night and can’t be placed elsewhere that day. The cabinet told the Courier-Journal that at least 11 kids have stayed overnight at the building this year so far.

A spokesperson for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services told the outlet that the cabinet had to do so because of a lack of families willing to take in foster children.

Louisville Republican Senator Julie Raque Adams, the Senate’s majority caucus leader, has led calls among Republicans for improvement.

“Our abused, neglected, and dependent children deserve the very best from our state and I hope the administration will prioritize this issue and work with urgency to correct these wrongs,” Adams said.

Cameron’s got a crime plan

In one of the first big policy splashes of the general election campaign, Cameron released a lengthy 12-point plan to address crime in the Commonwealth.

The plan proposed allowing murder charges for drug dealers involved in an overdose death, pursuing the death penalty for people who murder cops, revoking subpoena powers for civilian police review boards and giving Kentucky law enforcement officers a $5,000 bonus.

Other initiatives proposed in the plan include placing restrictions on the state’s parole board as well as increasing avenues for the Kentucky State Police to wiretap and for the state to collect DNA from people who are arrested for certain crimes.

The race for who’s got the majority backing of ‘the blue’ seems likely to tilt in Cameron’s favor – police unions, especially those in Kentucky, have tended to tilt Republican in recent years – but that hasn’t stopped Beshear from trying. His campaign previously unveiled dozens of endorsements from law enforcement members in June.

The question of who is to blame for crime in Kentucky – as is the case with most things for which credit or blame can be assigned – has become a political back-and-forth between the two candidates. With Cameron coming out of the gates firing at Beshear over the state’s crime issues, the attorney general stated that crime blame is to be assigned to Beshear and not himself as the state’s top law enforcement official.

Crime rates went up basically everywhere in the United States, Kentucky included, during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve also gone down most everywhere in the past couple years, including in Kentucky’s cities. So, narratives potentially benefiting both sides are in no short supply. Expect more on crime in the coming months.

Beshear touts Hitachi expansion

While one major employer announcement in Hopkinsville was put on hold due to the project’s connection to China, another in Berea is moving right along.

Hitachi Astemo, a automotive manufacturer with locations in Berea and Harrodsburg, announced this week that it was adding 167 jobs via a $153 million investment in response to the growth of the electric vehicle industry. Those jobs come in addition to the company’s 2,100 in both locations.

Such announcements have become a key plank in Beshear’s re-election campaign, as economic development has traditionally been used by incumbent governors to show what they’re doing for Kentucky.

No Cameron LG movement

We don’t have an answer on one of the biggest questions looming over Cameron’s campaign: who will be his lieutenant governor running mate.

Last month, we compiled an extensive list of who he might look at for the role, with Quarles and House Speaker Pro Tempore David Meade, R-Stanford, atop the list.

Quarles, it seems, may have an announcement soon, according to WKU Public Radio, who caught up with him earlier this week.

He said he’s had “very positive conversations” with Cameron about the lieutenant governor slot and that he was committed to staying in “public service.” However, he did not respond directly to a question about whether or not he planned to apply to lead the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) – Quarles, a 39-year-old who has been running for elected office since he was 26, holds a doctorate in education.

It’s worth mentioning that higher education presidential jobs are extremely high-paying for the public sector. The former KCTCS president was bringing in $379,000 a year, and he denied himself the potential for a huge pay bump in 2019.

Quarles said he’d have an announcement on what he’s doing next “in the next few days.”

The Cameron campaign has less than a month, August 8 to be exact, to pick a running mate.