Why Kentucky’s Democratic governor is heading for re-election
ASKED TO DESCRIBE the politics of Kentucky, many would default to calling it Trump country. And they would have many points in their favour. But others object. “It’s Beshear country!” yells Steve Beshear, the state’s Democratic governor between 2007 and 2015, unzipping his bomber jacket to show a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan for dramatic effect. He, too, has a point. On a wet Saturday morning in Lexington he was the warm-up act for his son, Andy Beshear, the sitting Democratic governor of the state, who is running for re-election on November 7th. Incredibly for a state that went for Mr Trump by 26 percentage points in 2020, current polls make Beshear the Younger the favourite.
As in Appalachia and the American South, Democrats once swept Kentucky. In recent elections, Democrats have managed to convince themselves that one of their number has a chance of winning a prominent statewide race, and then raise fabulous sums of money, only to face a drubbing at the ballot box. Thus in 2020 Amy McGrath, a serially unsuccessful Democratic candidate, raised $90m in her race to unseat the Republican senator Mitch McConnell—only to lose by 20 points. Yet the state has spent more years this century being governed by a Democrat than by a Republican. And it may now be in for another four years of the same.
That should be instructive for Democrats. Both Beshear père and fils have managed to keep an arm’s-length relationship with presidents of their own party. They have done so by touting the economic benefits of federal spending. Despite the unpopularity of Obamacare, the elder Beshear pushed through an expansion to Medicaid, the health-insurance programme for the poor, and a state-run insurance exchange (which Republicans are no longer campaigning to undo). The younger Beshear touts private-sector investments spurred on by the Inflation Reduction Act, a big subsidy bill, even as he murmurs…
2023-11-02 09:17:57
Post from www.economist.com
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