Pandemic criticism of Beshear played well in Kentucky GOP primary, but does it hold up?

Kentucky's Republican primary for governor this year unquestionably cast one main villain that every candidate made sure to expose in their speeches, ads and campaign messaging.

That villain was Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, and his main offenses were delivered from a lectern in the Capitol Building during his daily press briefings at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — including executive orders shutting down mass gatherings, closing schools and businesses and mandating masks.

Republican Attorney Daniel Cameron came out on top in that competitive GOP primary, perhaps largely in part to being the face of the opposition to Beshear's actions, repeatedly challenging the governor's emergency regulations in court.

Now in the midst of what is expected to be a competitive general election, Cameron still makes these criticisms of Beshear's pandemic actions in speeches to Republican audiences, but no longer are they the main attraction in the millions of dollars worth of TV ads from his campaign and aligned Republican PACs — which are now focused on crime and transgender social issues.

At a political event in Louisville last month, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams shared his own candid thoughts on why the pandemic-related criticisms of Beshear may have taken a backseat in the general election, illustrated by anecdotes from the campaign trail.

"When I go out in the state, to places like Rockcastle County, McCreary County — very, very Republican — and I go into the courthouse to shake hands, people have masks on," Adams said. "That's striking to me. In 2023, in a Republican area."

Adams expressed skepticism that rehashing the COVID-19 orders of 2020 and 2021 was the best angle to beat Beshear, saying "it's certainly good for the Republican base, but in terms of the loose Republicans that will split their tickets, I don't know, candidly, what the right messaging is for those people."

While some of the biggest applause lines of Republican events during the primary were attacks on Beshear's mass gatherings ban that shut down Easter services in 2020 — and the use of state troopers in the case of one intransigent church — Adams said that message may now hit differently.

"I totally agree that the governor shouldn't have closed churches, but 99% of them closed voluntarily, right?" Adams asked.

Cameron is still making a passionate pitch to voters across the state about the consequences of Beshear's actions — ranging from student learning loss from remote instruction to the release of inmates due to health concerns — but some national political observers share the same skepticism about its effectiveness, as evidenced from public polling and the last national election cycle.

Portion of Kentucky 'thinks that he saved their lives'

Beshear has proved himself to be the one Democrat in Kentucky that is able to defy political gravity in a state dominated by Republicans, who hold all but one spot in its federal delegation, a large supermajority in the General Assembly and five of the six statewide constitutional offices.

Despite Republicans cleaning house in Kentucky elections — and Beshear only winning his office in 2019 by a few thousand votes — polling has consistently shown him to be one of the most popular governors in the country over the past three years, with approval ratings hovering around 60%.

Instead of hurting him, all outward signs from polling suggest the pandemic actually boosted Beshear's popularity, as his daily pressers during the frightening onset of COVID-19 turned him into a household name and face — trusted by many.

Those daily Beshear press conferences not only spawned memes, but hundreds of thousands of people tuning in to watch him give COVID-19 updates and pay tribute to those who had died.

Over the stretch of one month from mid-March to mid-April, The number of people viewing Beshear's Facebook live videos averaged more than 366,000, with viewership still regularly exceeding 200,000 throughout that summer. Even into 2021, when his pressers were less regular, he still averaged tens of thousands of viewers on the platform.

While many Republicans were infuriated by his pandemic orders and remain so, even GOP pollsters have shown a sizable chunk of the party giving Beshear favorable grades — including a June survey showing 38% of Republican respondents saying they approved of his job performance.

Recently asked what accounts for Beshear's popularity, especially among a segment of suburban voters that typically vote Republican, Kentucky Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown — one of the fiercest critics of the governor in Frankfort — pointed back disgustedly to those regular pandemic press conferences.

"I guess those four o'clock beer with Andy sessions had a long-term positive effect," Thayer said, adding that "they made me sick to my stomach."

"The further we get away from COVID, the more of us who opposed his executive actions feel even better about the things we did to make sure they can't happen again. But there seems to be a certain slice of the populace who thinks that he saved their lives."

The 2022 election and short-term memories

Jessica Taylor, an analyst of governor races for Cook Political Report, says if the last election cycle is an indicator, Beshear's pandemic history is unlikely to hurt him in November.

In the 2022 election, Taylor noted that all but one incumbent governor dealing with the challenge of pandemic policy won reelection — the exception being Steve Sisolak in Nevada, where the tourist economy was uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic. The same held true in the 2020 election, when no incumbents lost.

"To me, as someone that follows governors, I think (the pandemic) really raised governors' profiles in states and made them think about the way that those decisions affect them," Taylor said, adding that most incumbents across the country "still enjoy very high approval ratings from their work during the pandemic."

"I don't necessarily see this as a salient attack on Beshear, when you look at what they have aired against him so far, and the fact that his approval ratings continue to hover around 60%."

Cook Political Report rates Kentucky's race as "Lean Democrat," with Taylor pointing to Beshear's continued high approval rating — even in the face of millions of dollars worth of attack ads through the summer — and his campaign's relative spending advantage.

James Druckman, a political science professor at Northwestern University, has been one of the researchers behind a massive 50-state survey project throughout the pandemic, gauging evolving public opinion on COVID-19 and the policy responses of different governors.

Druckman says that by the end of the pandemic last year, the public's performance evaluations of their governors "became increasingly detached from COVID evaluations — which echoes the general phenomenon of voters having fairly short-term retrospective political memories."

Eli Yokley, a political analyst at polling firm Morning Consult, said the most visceral issues in campaigns are those "with urgency on the minds of voters," and while COVID-19 and its impacts reigned over politics in 2020, "that issue was often overtaken in 2022 by things such as inflation, public safety and — most notably — abortion rights following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade."

"As the country gains more distance from the worst of the pandemic, the issue has become less pressing on the minds of voters nationwide even as some prominent voices in the Republican Party try to draw attention to it," Yokley said.

However, Yokley added a caveat that gubernatorial races "may be uniquely insulated from that dynamic given their distance from national politics, especially in an off-year contest such as Kentucky's."

Combating a 'not that bad' reputation

At a "Moms for Cameron" campaign event last week in Louisville, Cameron and his wife Makenze both stressed that Beshear's school closings in 2020 and mask orders in 2021 harmed the learning outcomes of kids,

"We know that because of the short-sided and disastrous decision to shut our schools, our kids can lose out on tens of thousands of dollars of earning income and potential over the course of their careers," Cameron said.

Near the end of the event — in which she laid out a long list of criticisms of Beshear administration policies, much of it pandemic-related — Makenze Cameron shared an indicator that it's still a difficult task to win over some otherwise reliable Republican voters on this subject.

"I hear over and over from people, and I know you hear it too — 'Andy Beshear is not that bad,'" she said. "I just encourage you to truly, truly look at his record, truly look at what he has done in his three and a half years as governor."

Asked if it is a challenge to unite his party around this issue and bring in those who still give favorable grades to Beshear, Cameron said it's on his shoulders to make that case to voters.

"It's my job to get out and tell as many people as I possibly can and share what the downfalls of the Beshear administration had been over the course of these last three and a half years," Cameron said. "The responsibility is on me get to as many parts of this commonwealth as I possibly can. It's a big state, 120 counties, but we're working hard."

More politics: A look at Kentucky's James Comer, a leader of the Biden impeachment inquiry

Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky governor's race: Will pandemic criticism of Beshear hold up?