KENTUCKY GRUDGE MATCH: A GOVERNOR’S RACE WITH HEAVY 2020 IMPLICATIONS
On November 5, 2019, almost exactly one year to the day before Donald Trump faces reelection, incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin will face off against Democrat Andy Beshear in a Governor’s race that could have massive implications for 2020. Kentucky’s previous Governor’s race, in 2015, foretold the mass rural exodus that would haunt Democrats and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Rural counties in Kentucky that had long voted for Democrats on the local level, abruptly shifted their votes to the Republicans in 2015. In 2016, rural voters in several other midwestern states followed suit and gave Hillary Clinton a paltry 29% of the total rural vote compared to the 41% and 38% that Barack Obama earned in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
Rural Kentucky voters threw up multiple red flags, in 2015, that Hillary Clinton’s campaign ignored in 2016. A simple look at Clinton’s proposals for rural communities showed that her campaign did not take rural communities seriously. Her policies offered little more than bland lip service that had no meaningful weight behind them. Promoting clean energy and supporting family farms did not come close to the real issues that rural voters cared about. Solutions to the opioid crisis, disintegrating job prospects, or the feeling of being left behind were nowhere to be found in Clinton’s proposals.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, however, was merely a microcosm to the Democrats’ thinking between 2013 and 2016. Many Democrat strategists thought that they simply didn’t need rural voters to win the presidency. Instead, they believed that Democrats could be carried to a victory simply by mobilizing urban/suburban voters and minorities. Little else would explain why Clinton’s campaign didn’t form a rural counsel, like Barack Obama had done in 2008 and 2012.
While there is no one single discernable event that led to the large rural shift from Democrat to Republican, it is clear that many rural voters experienced dissolution with the Democrats. Kentucky’s 2015 election results also show that Donald Trump, while a minor factor, was not the overriding cause of the overall rural shift from 2013 to 2016. Trump was barely tallying 20% in polls, and only slightly led the anemic Ben Carson during Kentucky’s last gubernatorial election. The shift among rural voters was not due to Trump, but resulted from a combination of economic and cultural factors that Democrats ignored. Trump merely exploited those factors in his 2016 victory, but he was not the catalyst behind the rural shift. Democrats did slightly claw back in rural areas by winning 37% of the overall rural vote in the 2018 midterm elections, but they still face major headwinds going forward. It is those same rural headwinds that Democrat Andy Beshear must overcome, like his father did, in order to win Kentucky’s gubernatorial race in November.
Kentucky’s 41% rural population share makes the Bluegrass State one of the most rural states in the country. The state also bucks traditional norms by voting for its governor in odd years, or one year prior to the general election for president. The state experienced its massive shift from Democrat to Republican in the period between the 2011 and 2015 gubernatorial races. Often overlooked, Kentucky Democrats dominated state and local politics all the way up to 2015-2016. As recently as 2015, Democrats maintained a voter registration advantage of 400,000 voters (1,681,031 to 1,219,518) over the Republicans. While Democrats may still control the Attorney General and Secretary of State positions in Kentucky, they lost the Governorship and Kentucky Statehouse in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
In 2011, Democrat Governor Steve Beshear (Andy Beshear’s father), won large majorities of the vote in rural Ballard, Carlisle, Hickman and Fulton counties. Just four years later, Matt Bevin won those same counties over Democrat Jack Conway by similarly large margins. All four of these counties, which straddle the Mississippi River in the southwest portion of the state, rank in the bottom ten in county population in Kentucky. These counties were emblematic of the country’s rural political shift, and are the counties that the younger Beshear will need to win in order to defeat Bevin.
Beshear does own a strong advantage in Kentucky’s urban centers, such as Louisville and Lexington and he will look to run up the score there. These urban voters, however, are not enough to protect Beshear from a massive rural defeat similar to what Conway experienced in 2015. Beshear absolutely must produce a strong showing in counties such as Ballard, Carlisle, Hickman and Fulton. Kentucky’s urban centers just simply will not produce high enough margins to give Beshear the victory outright. Like national Democrats, Beshear cannot lose rural areas by large margins and still hope to win.
Beshear has followed a similar playbook as his father did by focusing on health care, and is particularly attacking Bevin’s dismantling of Kentucky’s popular health care exchange, Kynect. Kynect was a state-run health care exchange created by Governor Steve Beshear that allowed Kentucky citizens to acquire health care policies—much like the Obamacare marketplace. Bevin, in a blatantly political move, kicked hundreds of thousands of Kentucky citizens off of their health care plans and forced those individuals to re-enroll with the federal health care exchange. Kynect had sky-high enrollment of over 400,000 enrollees in just its first year of existence, and was arguably the elder Beshear’s greatest accomplishment as governor. Make no mistake, the takedown of Kynect was personal to Andy Beshear and he is counting on a health care focused electorate to put him over the top.
Andy Beshear’s term as Attorney General has entirely coincided with Matt Bevin’s tenure in governor’s mansion. The issue over Kynect was hardly the first clash between the two. Since becoming Kentucky’s Attorney General, in 2015, Bevin and Beshear have tangled on everything from health care and opioids, to Donald Trump’s impeachment. To say Matt Bevin does not like Andy Beshear would be a gross understatement. In the second Kentucky gubernatorial debate, on October 15, 2019, Bevin hurled insult after insult at Beshear in a blend of snark, defiance and rage. This included attacks on Beshear’s family and even calling Andy Beshear a fraud. Andy Beshear, however, has tried his best to stay above the fray and focus on policy. In the debate he highlighted his campaign’s focus on kitchen-table issues and Bevin’s extreme positions on abortion and health care. With all the animosity between the two candidates it is hardly surprising that recent polls have shown the race to be a dead heat. However, below the surface it would appear that Matt Bevin and the Republicans have the advantage.
In recent elections, Kentucky has begun to vote more along the lines of its presidential preferences. Ticket-splitting, once common in the state, has largely disappeared as political campaigns have become more and more nationalized. No one has attempted to nationalize Kentucky’s governor’s race more than Matt Bevin himself. Bevin has tied himself to Donald Trump at every turn and is seeking to tap into Trump’s overwhelming approval in the Bluegrass State. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 30% in 2016 and Republicans control both Senate seats and five of the six House seats. Kentucky is about as safe of a Republican state as they come on the national level. If Kentucky voters vote for their gubernatorial candidate based upon the party of their preferred Presidential candidate, then Matt Bevin would win in a landslide. Bevin understands that he needs Donald Trump in the race and that is why Trump is visiting Kentucky on November 4, 2019. Republicans hope that Trump’s visit, on the eve of the election, will motivate Trump supporters to avoid ticket splitting and vote for Bevin for reelection. If the governor’s race is truly nationalized then Matt Bevin will likely win.
Beshear’s campaign recognizes this and have focused entirely on local issues in an attempt to sway voters back to split-ticket decisions. Healthcare, particularly the opioid crisis jobs, and pay raises for educators are at the heart of Beshear’s campaign promises. Nowhere to be found in Beshear’s main campaign promises are national Democrat positions such as single-payer health care, immigration and gun control. Beshear also knows not to make the same mistakes that national Democrats have made in ignoring rural voters. Directly appealing to rural voters has been central to Beshear, due to the known Democrat weakness there. Republicans, worried about losing any of the rural vote, have been distributing anti-Beshear emails to rural teachers.
Rural voters matter in Kentucky, especially to the Democrats. As recently as 2011, rural voters constituted the bedrock of the Democrat voter base. Losing these voters permanently will lead to dark times for the Democrats. The exodus of rural voters has a placed a huge burden on the party’s urban voters to overperform. However, only five cities in the Bluegrass State contain a population of over 40,000 meaning that there simply are not enough urban voters to offset Democrat’s massive losses in rural areas. Kentucky has approximately 4.5 million citizens and its largest city, Louisville, only contains 620,000 of the state’s citizenry. Beshear will have to continue to speak directly to rural voters and convince them that he, and not Bevin, is best equipped to address state health care, agriculture and further policy initiatives.
Neither side is willing to give an inch and Bevin especially has been willing to play the so-called cultural wars card. Bevin, has blamed zombies for mass shootings, and has pushed the explosive issue of abortion into the center of his campaign. If cultural politics at all become part of the discourse in this race, Bevin will likely defeat Beshear. Kentucky is among the more religious states in the U.S. and issues like abortion and guns are lightning rods for turning out the Republican base. Republicans have also attempted to bring Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the so-called “war on coal,” all incredibly unpopular buzzwords in Kentucky, into the race against Beshear. Republicans and Matt Bevin know that riling up their base against national Democrats is the most surefire way to make voters forget about Bevin’s own shortcomings. Bevin is among the most unpopular governors in the entire country, largely due to his healthcare stance and confrontational style. His ability to stir up the Republican base, however, makes him a potent candidate. Bevin is not afraid to play the cultural wars game and prides himself in not being “politically correct.”
Andy Beshear’s greatest strength remains his huge name recognition and goodwill from his father’s time as Governor from 2007 to 2015. Steve Beshear, in contrast to Matt Bevin, was among the most popular Governors in the entire country when he stepped down, due to term limits. In a nod to his popularity, Steve Beshear was even given the opportunity to deliver the Democrat’s response to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union Address in 2017. Andy Beshear has and will be sure to name check his famous father at every turn, while also drawing a contrast to Bevin’s confrontational and sometimes off-putting style.
Despite Matt Bevin’s unpopularity and confrontational style, he remains a slight favorite over Andy Beshear. Beshear simply is facing political headwinds that are too harsh for any Democrat to overcome in the Bluegrass State. Donald Trump remains popular in the state and Republican’s laser-guided focus at nationalizing the race are paying dividends as Bevin has turned previous polling deficits into a tie. There is little indication that rural voters have taken enough of a liking to Andy Beshear in order to put him over the top. In Kentucky’s Democratic primary, Beshear defeated Rocky Adkins on the back of urban voters. Adkins was the one who won the majority of Kentucky’s rural vote, and despite Adkins’ campaigning on behalf of Beshear in those areas, it is likely not going to be enough.
If Matt Bevin wins reelection in a similar manner to how he did in 2015, then it should sound alarm bells for Democrats, alerting them that they are once again in trouble in the Midwest and Rust belt. Iowa, in particular, has a similar percentage of rural voters as Kentucky. A large Republican victory in rural Kentucky, similar to that in 2015, would show that the Democrats have made little progress in returning their once reliable rural voters back into the blue column. While rural voters from state to state are not monolithic, Kentucky’s rural shift in 2015 prefaced the country as a whole in 2016. The political party that won Kentucky’s governorship has gone on to see their party win the presidency in every election cycle since 2003. Kentucky voters’ preferences have predicted the victorious party for president in every election cycle, but one since 1991. After the completion of Kentucky’s gubernatorial race in November, it is possible that we may know which party will win the presidency in 2020.
PREDICTION: Matt Bevin (R) defeats Andy Beshear (D) by a 5% - 8% margin.