Nearly $50 million spent on ads in KY governor’s race so far. More coming. | 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 two 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.

If you feel like there’s a new political commercial every time you turn on your television or scroll through social media, you’re probably not wrong.

In less than two weeks, more than a half-dozen new ads have been released by Gov. Andy Beshear, Attorney General Daniel Cameron and various outside groups supporting or opposing either candidate’s bid for the governor’s mansion.

According to AdImpact, an organization that tracks political advertising, there’s been $46.6 million spent on ads and future airtime reservations in the general election cycle of the Kentucky governor’s race. Of that, about $32 million is from Democratic advertisers and more than $14 million is from Republican groups.

That’s a 92% increase over 2019’s total spending of $24 million, when Beshear defeated incumbent Matt Bevin, per AdImpact.

The Beshear campaign has spent 10 times as much as Cameron, per AdImpact, with Beshear dropping $13.4 million to Cameron’s $1.3 million.

Here’s an overview of the new ads:

• Defending Bluegrass Values, a group affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association, hit Cameron for “bringing back” Bevin’s “ruthless Medicaid plan, threatening to take away coverage from over 95,000 Kentuckians.” Medium Buying posted the video to social media Aug. 28, and an Aug. 10 news release from the DGA said the PAC had reserved “over $11 million in TV ads.”

• The School Freedom Fund, a PAC affiliated with the Club for Growth that endorsed Cameron, hit Beshear for his 2020 COVID-19 prison commutations. A similar ad released in late July was a part of a $2.9 million ad buy in Louisville and Lexington. (As a reminder, The Herald-Leader dove into the facts behind the claims made in the ads.)

• The Beshear campaign hit Cameron last Friday for his stance on banning abortion — without ever saying the word “abortion” — which does not include exceptions for victims of rape of incest. You can read more about that in this story.

• Protect Freedom PAC, which is affiliated with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, went after Beshear for his COVID-19 restrictions in a new ad posted to AdImpact’s website. The video has drawn the ire of the Beshear campaign for including footage of his young daughter, Lila, which you can read more about here.

• A second Protect Freedom ad posted to YouTube featured three pastors criticizing Beshear for closing places of worship in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was a tragic time for the church, and Gov. Beshear, just, he didn’t seem to care.,” one pastor says.

• The Cameron campaign on Wednesday posted an ad inspired by Cameron’s walk-on days as a University of Louisville football player. Cameron promises to “leave it all on the field” as governor, and also attacked Beshear for his COVID commutations and school closures.

• Kentucky Values, a PAC from the Republican Governors Association, is back on TV, claiming Beshear lied about gender-affirming surgeries for trans kids and asks, “What else is he lying about?” The Herald-Leader also previously wrote about the issue at the heart of this ad.

• A second, new Beshear campaign ad touting the strength of Kentucky’s economy was posted Thursday by Medium Buying. “We all want our kids to have a future here in Kentucky,” Beshear says in the ad. “That’s why I’m working hard to bring more jobs here. Companies big and small are setting up all over Kentucky.”

• Yet another Defending Bluegrass Values ad — the DGA-backed group — debuted Friday, going after Cameron on public education. “Kentuckians value public education and educators, and won’t be tricked into supporting a candidate who wants to strip funding from public schools like Daniel Cameron, no matter how many empty apologies he offers,” the DGA said in a news release.

Additionally, the RGA rolled out on Thursday a brief hype video for Cameron.

Medium Buying also reported that pro-Cameron PAC Bluegrass Freedom Action will return to TV Sept. 8 after being off the air for a few weeks.

Only two more months of this, folks.

New Beshear-commissioned poll shows incumbent up big

The Beshear campaign on Tuesday released an internal polling memo from Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group showing that the governor’s lead over challenger Cameron has grown to nine percentage points, compared to just three percentage points in late July. FiveThirtyEight gives the pollster a B+ grade and has found they’ve correctly called 83% of the races polled.

According to the memo, the survey was conducted between Aug. 30 and Sept. 1 “among a representative sample of 716 likely Kentucky voters” via landlines, cell phones and text-to-web. The poll has a margin of error of 3.6%.

“After millions of dollars on gross, misleading and sometimes even debunked ads, all Daniel Cameron’s campaign and his four Super PACs have done is make him less popular and triple Beshear’s lead,” Beshear campaign manager Eric Hyers said.

Beshear leads Cameron 51% to 42%, the poll found, with 86% of Beshear’s backers saying they support him “strongly” compared to just 68% of Cameron’s supporters.

It also found that “two-thirds of Independents, but also a significant 32% of Republicans” approve of Beshear’s job performance, and 55% of those surveyed feel Beshear is more “down-to-earth and likeable” than Cameron, who got 28% support in that area.

In September 2019, a Garin-Hart-Yang poll released by the Beshear campaign showed him up 9 points over Bevin, according to The Bowling Green Daily News. Ultimately, Beshear won by about 0.4%, or just over 5,000 votes.

On that same note, Inside Elections recently moved the Kentucky governor’s race from “toss-up” to “tilt Democratic.”

The nonpartisan analysis site noted that the multimillion dollar GOP “ad campaign hasn’t appeared to drag down Beshear’s image rating or his position in the head-to-head race. It’s not obvious that another two and a half months of advertising will accomplish what the last three months didn’t do.”

But the report also noted: “Even though he has a narrow advantage in the final weeks, Beshear has little room for error and could still lose the race.”

Of all six Kentucky general election governor’s race polls released publicly to date — most of which were published by partisan groups — none shows Cameron leading Beshear.

Only one, conducted by GOP pollster Cygnal, showed Cameron even with Beshear. The other five show Beshear leading by anywhere from 2 to 10 percentage points.

Beshear touts ground game; Cameron travels the state

Beshear’s campaign has now knocked on 500,000 doors, according to a Sept. 7 post on the candidate’s social media. A week earlier, the campaign said their team had hit more than 350,000 homes.

The Democrat’s campaign opened a Paducah field office Aug. 31, and will host an open house at the field office in Louisville’s predominantly Black West End this Saturday.

Cameron, meanwhile, has been traveling the state, including appearances with U.S. Rep. James Comer, U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie. (Cameron has also previously appeared with U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers earlier this summer.)

Another notable face recently popping up a couple of times alongside Cameron: State Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville. This is significant because Wise was the running mate of Cameron’s main GOP primary rival, former ambassador Kelly Craft.

Craft ultimately finished third in the primary and promised to unite around Cameron as the nominee, but she’s yet to show up at any public appearance with him or offer support on social media. She is, however, co-hosting a fundraiser next week for presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Fourth-place finisher Eric Deters, a former attorney from Northern Kentucky, has hopped off the Cameron train, even recently posting a video saying the candidate is “toast.” Deters said Beshear is “nailing Cameron” on the abortion issue, and the “race is over. If it wasn’t already over, this is the issue that finishes off Daniel Cameron.”

‘Heckbent’ and ‘Laettner Before Beshear’ campaign swag

The Kentucky Democratic Party and the Cameron campaign, buoyed by recent quasi-viral social media moments, have both rolled out distinctive new merchandise.

First, Beshear described Cameron as being “heckbent” on taking away Medicaid coverage from Kentuckians. By the end of the day, the KDP had rolled out t-shirts, stickers and more declaring Beshear “heckbent on fighting for you.”

Then on Labor Day, Cameron posted a photo from Grayson County in which he stood next to a man wearing a shirt that declared in all caps: “I’d vote Laettner before Beshear.” (Laettner, of course, being Duke basketball player Christian Laettner, who ended Kentucky’s NCAA tournament run with a buzzer-beating overtime shot in 1992. This is stating the obvious, but Kentucky fans really don’t like that guy, even more than three decades later.)

By Tuesday, the shirt was available for purchase on the Cameron website for $34.