Trail to ’23: Debates getting set, a new PAC & a presidential proxy war?

This is part of an occasional Herald-Leader series, Trail to ‘23, to catch readers up on all the latest from this year’s crowded governor’s race (and occasionally other races). Earlier editions can be found online. There are less than six weeks left until the May 16 primary that will decide who among several GOP candidates will take on presumptive Democratic nominee Gov. Andy Beshear.

Pro-Cameron group enters the spending war

Another political action committee (PAC) is on the scene. Bluegrass Freedom Action, a group supporting Attorney General Daniel Cameron for governor, went up with an ad on Friday. The 30-second spot highlights his pro-police stance, lawsuits on opioids & the U.S.-Mexico border and endorsement from former president Donald Trump.

The timing was kind of notable, given that news of Trump’s impending indictment in New York broke the same day that the advertisement launched.

Still, Trump is a proven political winner in Kentucky. He won the state by 30 percentage points in 2016 – and is credited with helping lift Republicans into complete control of the statehouse that year – and 26 points in 2020.

The price tag on the PAC’s first wave of ad purchases? Roughly half a million split between cable and network television. That’s not exactly chump change, but it pales in comparison to the amount spent on advertising by former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft. Craft, who started the race with much lower name ID than Cameron, and an allied PAC have dropped more than $4 million on this race already.

The other candidate who’s made some media buys? Northern Kentucky firebrand Eric Deters. The controversial former attorney, who is criticizing U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in his bid for governor, dropped about $80,000 in a few cable television markets in March and April.

Debates are getting set

The opportunities to see all of Kentucky’s top GOP gubernatorial contenders on the same stage for debate are getting fewer.

First it was Kelly Craft not attending the first debate of the season in Louisville, and now it’s Cameron opting to stay out of the debate hosted by Kentucky Sports Radio (KSR) on April 19.

KSR founder and host Matt Jones has himself considered dabbling in politics. A Democrat, Jones wrote a book titled “Mitch, Please” critical of McConnell and toyed with the idea of running for U.S. Senate in the lead up to 2020. Jones and his crew have held debates for high-profile Kentucky offices several times in the past.

Jones expressed displeasure with Cameron on Twitter, saying that he scheduled the debate with the understanding that Cameron would attend.

Cameron’s team has not commented on the decision to attend an official office event on the same day instead of the debate. However, Jones and Craft have been friendly in the past, and some Republicans have expressed frustration that one of the most high-profile Democrats in the state is hosting an important debate for Republicans.

Craft’s only announced debates are KSR and a May 1 one with KET. The full KET slate of debate participants is yet to be announced as some candidates await the next campaign finance reporting deadline in mid-April to see if they qualify.

The KSR debate on April 19 will include Auditor Mike Harmon, Somerset Mayor Alan Keck, Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles and Craft.

WDKY-Fox 56 will host a debate on May 9, though the full slate of candidates is not available yet. Cameron has said he will attend.

Cameron, Quarles, Keck and Harmon will also appear at a Paducah forum April 18, and all 12 of the Republicans seeking Kentucky’s highest office have been invited to participate in debates in Northern Kentucky, though the participants haven’t been released just yet.

Down-ballot races heating up & spending

Ad space for the final week of the 2023 primary cycle has already been booked, but not by who you might assume.

Candidates Jonathan Shell for commissioner of agriculture and OJ Oleka for treasurer have booked ads for that final stretch in May.

You may not have heard of him before, but Shell is a household name in state Republican politics. At 29, he was selected to become the youngest majority floor leader in Kentucky history. Shortly thereafter, he was defeated in a primary, but he rebounded when he became U.S. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2020 campaign committee chair.

Shell’s been running for commissioner of agriculture for more than a year and a half now, raised a lot of money and booked $77,000 worth of ads during the final week. His competition, Rep. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, has the advantages of being on the ballot for this role before (he nearly beat Quarles in 2015) and passing a major local economic development bill. However, he has raised little money as of the last fundraising deadline.

That race hasn’t gotten too heated yet, but the race for treasurer has. Google the name “OJ Oleka” and one of the top results is a website called “noj23.com.” So, “no-J” in place of “O-J.” It calls Oleka a “Democrat in disguise” and highlights the statements of Oleka, who is Black, on fighting racism in Kentucky as alleged proof that he has pushed “liberal priorities of social justice warriors.”

Cooperrider is a local celebrity for disobeying local and state COVID-19 guidelines during the height of the pandemic, and he’s also a recent second-place finisher against Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville last May. Douglas won easily, but his side spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so.

Oleka has led Cooperrider in terms of funds raised by a factor of nearly 3 to 1 thus far, and we could see outside money come in to support him as well. Before running for office, Oleka was a lobbyist in Frankfort and a deputy on the staff of current Treasurer Allison Ball, who is running for auditor.

Another treasurer candidate, Mark Metcalf, meanwhile, has kept a low profile. But the Garrard County Attorney is a respected politician, elected to that office six times. Metcalf has been tapped to represent Kentucky in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as well as in an investigation of former Democratic secretary of state Allison Lundergan Grimes.

Big day in Bowling Green: the first (of many?) prez candidate in Kentucky

All the major Republican candidates for office are expected to attend the Warren County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner April 14, but the most high-profile person there will likely be the keynote speaker. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is set to speak at the event.

Hutchinson announced that he would run for president just this week, throwing in some digs at Trump’s legal troubles in the process.

Hutchinson’s speech, as well as those of the respective gubernatorial candidates, will be closely watched at the major event. But the first announced presidential candidate’s visit to Kentucky could be the start of something bigger: a presidential proxy war.

Trump has been backing Cameron for the better part of a year, and is certainly no stranger to large rallies, so be on the lookout for a potential visit to the state. The last one we knew of was Derby Day, where both Craft and Deters got photo ops with Trump (Deters has continued to show up at big Trump events, even going down to Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in the wake of his recent indictment).

Likewise, there are some connections to be made between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Craft campaign. A Super PAC urging DeSantis to run for president hired a team closely linked to Axiom Strategies, the main group running Craft’s campaign in Kentucky. Craft and her husband, coal magnate and billionaire philanthropist Joe Craft, have bankrolled presidential candidates in the past, and it’s possible that a DeSantis visit to Kentucky could be of mutual benefit to the gubernatorial candidate and (potential) presidential candidate.

Jabs and barbs

While the fights over policy in the Kentucky state legislature (at least the public ones) were Republican vs. Democrat, GOP candidates – particularly Cameron and Craft – have started to go after each other in the lead-up to May.

Craft’s team, both the campaign itself and a pro-Craft PAC has aired ads highlighting Cameron’s perceived weaknesses, has stayed focused on a line of attack regarding a West Virginia coal plant closure that Cameron supported.

The Craft campaign sent out a personalized mailer to GOP voters in the style of a utility rate raise notice in late March. In bold, all-caps letters, the mailer states that “THIS LETTER IS TO NOTIFY YOU THAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT AN INCREASE IN YOUR UTILITY BILL DUE TO DANIEL CAMERON HIJACKING YOUR RATES.”

Cameron’s camp has responded to criticism over the plant closure, with strategist Brandon Moody decrying Craft going “full negative,” while pointing out that the Crafts had given $50,000 to Democrats as recently as former president Barack Obama’s 2008 effort.

Meanwhile, Keck also threw in a dig at Craft for continuing to insist that Kentucky is actually a “border state” because of illegal drugs that she says flow into the state from Mexico.

“The southern border I’m most concerned about is Kentucky’s. We have an economic crisis because we are consistently losing to Tennessee, which has no income tax and a thriving tourism economy,” Keck wrote in a tweet responding to the Craft comment.

Craft’s latest ad, however, is focused on her accomplishments as ambassador, highlighting her role in renegotiating (or as the commercial puts it “ripping” up) the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Cameron has long touted himself as the frontrunner, and he has a campaign poll and a public survey from respected pollster Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy to prove it. But those took place earlier this year.

Look out for the results of an Emerson College poll to drop sometime this month. The results will reveal if Craft and pro-Craft forces’ voluminous attacks on Cameron have worked, if their own efforts to elevate their candidate have resonated, and if any other candidates have succeeded in gaining more traction.