Final takeaways from KY ’23 election: Beshear gains ground, low turnout and who runs in ’27

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s five-point win over Republican challenger Daniel Cameron has generated no shortage of opinions, predictions and other angles from national perspectives.

However, it fundamentally changes the game for state-level politics in Kentucky. Another four years of Beshear, with four years of an entirely Republican slate of fellow statewide elected officers, mean a lot for both political parties in the state going forward.

So, now that the dust has settled, what’s next for Andy Beshear?

Where could Democrats, still endangered, grow their presence in the state?

And how might Republicans, still dominant but vexed in defeat, respond?

Here’s a final analysis of Kentucky’s 2023 election from our politics and statehouse reporting team of Tessa Duvall and Austin Horn.

Are the big Beshear gain areas fertile ground for Dems?

Democrats in the statehouse are in dire shape – with minorities of 20 in the 100-person House and 7 in the 38-person Senate – but Beshear’s win showed some that there’s hope for future gains.

With a governor unshackled from a tough re-election battle, Beshear may be able to expend more political capital to score legislative wins, similar to what Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried to do this year.

Some are seeing hope in the map.

According to analysis done by Robert Kahne, a podcast host and Kentucky Democratic State Central Executive Committee member, Beshear’s five-point win mapped onto the state House districts would result in a 50/50 Democrat-Republican split there.

That’s a far cry from the 20-person minority there now.

Per Kahne’s work, Beshear won House districts where House Democrats haven’t sniffed a win in years – such places as suburban Northern Kentucky, Hardin County and rural Central Kentucky. A 50/50 split is still a pipe dream, most Democrats would agree.

But with more explicit help from Beshear, 20 could prove to be the floor for House Democrats.

“He can raise money for candidates, campaign with them and perhaps lend them some of the longstanding, resilient popularity that was key to his defeat of Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron,” Al Cross, longtime Kentucky political journalist, wrote in a recent column.

“Republicans’ legislative majorities are huge, and could be long-lasting, but as party leader, Beshear has an obligation to his fellow Democrats to help them regain relevance,”

Of the 30 House Districts currently represented by Republicans that Beshear won, he put up double-digit wins in 14 of them. The most vulnerable Republicans per Kahne’s math?

Beshear won Louisville House districts represented by Republican legislators Susan Witten, Ken Fleming and Jared Bauman by more than 20 percentage points.

In Lexington and parts of Jessamine County, he won Rep. Killian Timoney’s 45th House District by 21 points.

Kentucky is still a Republican state… with a Democratic governor

While Democrats were handed the biggest win of the night, Beshear’s victory was still the exception rather than the rule. The closest of the five down-ballot races was 15 points, where Republican Treasurer-elect Mark Metcalf beat second-time candidate Michael Bowman.

The most closely watched race after Beshear vs. Cameron – the contest between Republican Russell Coleman and Democrat Pamela Stevenson for attorney general – was a 16-percentage point victory for Coleman.

And the top vote-getter of the night was Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, who won almost 785,000 votes over his Democratic challenger Buddy Wheatley. (A couple thousand votes behind Adams was Treasurer Allison Ball, who will be Kentucky’s next auditor.)

Lest anyone forget how red Kentucky is, Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, is there to remind them about the party breakdown of the upcoming 2024 General Assembly, which kicks off in January.

“31 Rs 7 Ds,” he posted on social media. “80 Rs 20Ds.”

Where did Republicans gain ground & what does it tell us?

Bucking the trend of Beshear gains across the state were two regions: A slice of rural western and south-central Kentucky and northeastern Kentucky.

While Beshear improved his margins almost everywhere – impressively, he upped his margin by more than 2,000 in such Republican-leaning counties as Laurel, Pulaski and McCracken – Cameron bettered Bevin’s margins in Carter and Simpson counties by more than 500 votes.

Dan Bayens of Medium Buying made a keen observation about media markets when assessing those areas.

In the northeastern Kentucky television media market of Charleston-Huntington, which serves Carter, Cameron and his allies were unusually close in spending to Beshear and groups supporting him.

In the south-central region served by the Nashville media market, which includes Simpson County despite being next door to Warren County which has its own media market, no campaign or group was up on local broadcast television.

Bayens overall point being: Television ads work.

Turnout was low. That helped Beshear.

Overall voter turnout was down this year from 2019 levels: 42% in 2019 to 38% this year.

So while Beshear increased his margin of victory, he won with fewer overall votes: about 694,000 compared to 2019’s almost 710,000.

Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, said on social media the numbers showed it was “pretty evident KY Republicans had a turnout/enthusiasm problem today.”

Regionalized turnout played a factor, too.

Turnout was down basically everywhere — with a couple regional exceptions like Monroe County, where there was a wet/dry vote — but it went down more in rural, traditionally Republican areas than swing counties or Democratic strongholds.

While overall turnout was down in Fayette, Beshear did eke out about 1,000 more votes in that county compared to 2019. The state’s second-largest county turned out 73,397 votes in 2019 for Beshear and 74,298 this year.

Dems looking to 2027?

While the Democrats have an undeniably more shallow bench of contenders, the discussion of, “Who might run after Beshear?” is a lot more clear cut this far out.

The only names with any amount of buzz behind them – though, it’s worth pointing out, political winds are highly subject to change – are Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman and Beshear Senior Adviser Rocky Adkins.

Adkins, the 2019 Democratic gubernatorial primary second-place finisher and former House Democratic leader, indicated on election night that he’s open to running for office again.

“You know, I’ve got fuel left in the tank. We’ll see where that goes... I’m so excited to see these blue counties in Eastern Kentucky that came home tonight.”

Adkins’ name has been thrown out for governor as well as the Fifth U.S. Congressional District, where 85-year-old Dean of the House Hal Rogers, R-KY, is political Teflon.

Though Rogers has won the district handily as a Republican for decades, there’s long been speculation that the traditionally Democratic area might break for a candidate like Adkins, a moderate who’s a veritable political celebrity in his pocket of Eastern Kentucky.

In the era of the governor and lieutenant governor sharing an electoral slot, no No. 2 has won the top job in Frankfort. But Coleman could give it a go, as she’ll already be making history as the first consecutive-term lieutenant governor in modern Kentucky history.

A reporter on Wednesday asked Coleman if she plans to run for governor in 2027.

“I think that’s a bit like putting Christmas decorations out before Halloween,” Coleman said.

“We just got through this election and we have a lot to accomplish. We’ve got a lot of really good things going on in Kentucky. So, my main focus is going to be continuing to support this administration moving forward, and then we’ll see what comes in the future.”

Adams for higher office?

Adams, who secured a second term as Secretary of State and is therefore term limited come 2027, emerged Tuesday night as the winner with the most votes of any candidate on the ballot with more than 783,000 – a fact he won’t soon let anyone forget.

“Top. Vote. Getter,” reads Adams’ new campaign account bio on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

And the tone of his election night victory speech didn’t go unnoticed, either. He touched on issues and themes far beyond the purview of his current office.

“Kentucky has defied the odds and the laws of political physics by taking the highly polarized third rail issue of how we vote, putting politics aside, approaching it inclusively and in good faith, and courageously making the biggest changes in over 100 years. We’re the only state doing that,” Adams said.

“If we can boldly take Kentucky from the bottom to the top in election reform, why can’t we do the same with education? With public safety? With quality of life? With social mobility? The answer is: We absolutely can, and I’m optimistic for our long-term future in the commonwealth.”

He concluded by thanking Kentuckians from “across the political spectrum for your overwhelming trust in me.”

“I will not let you down.”

Other Republicans to watch

Adams’ speech was the most notable in the immediate post-election, but he’s got a couple factors working against him as of today, primarily, raising money and primary challenges.

Being the most forcefully anti-election denial Republican in the state earned the Louisville attorney plaudits among centrist and liberal Kentuckians.

However, that could be used against him in a non-incumbent Republican primary setting. After all, the majority of Republicans in America agree with the false idea that President Joe Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate, and plenty other state Republicans have tiptoed around the issue.

First Congressional District Rep. James Comer, R-KY, has stated publicly that he’d be open to running for governor again. In 2015, he lost a narrow primary contest to former Republican governor Matt Bevin.

Any one of the state’s Congressional Republicans would be seen as viable should they decide to throw their hat in the ring for an office like governor or U.S. Senate.

Rep. Andy Barr, R-KY, with a strong base of Central Kentucky support and long history on the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, who’s made a name for himself as one of Washington’s chief contrarians, top the list of Kentucky congressmen talked about for such offices.

But there are others who might make a go at it. Not coming too far behind Adams in terms of votes were Attorney General-Elect Russell Coleman, Auditor-Elect Allison Ball and Commissioner of Agriculture-Elect Jonathan Shell. All three have conservative credentials.

Shell and Coleman have strong ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and proved they could raise a heap of money this year, too. Shell doled it out in an expensive primary, and Coleman paced all down-ballot candidates by raising well over $1 million dollars

When thinking about 2027, it’s also possible Republicans go back to some familiar names.

Third-place 2023 GOP primary finisher Kelly Craft and second-place finisher Ryan Quarles, who now leads the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, showed that they could raise money in their losses to Cameron.

Also, don’t prematurely count out Cameron, either. At just 37-years-old, Cameron knows many of the nation’s most successful politicians have bounced back from worse losses.