Incumbent Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear won a second term Tuesday, fending off a spirited challenge from Republican Commonwealth Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who would have been the Bluegrass State’s first-ever black governor.
With 87% of the vote in, Beshear led Cameron by five percentage points, or more than 62,000 votes out of more than 1.2 million cast.
The race had been closely watched to see whether a popular Democratic governor could win despite running in a deep-red state and with a deeply unpopular president sitting in the White House.
Beshear, the son of former Gov. Steve Beshear, who led Kentucky from 2007 through 2015, is one of just three Democratic governors in the South or Southeast — a number that will be reduced to two when Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards leaves office early next year.
The 45-year-old narrowly gained the governor’s mansion in 2019, when he unseated Republican incumbent Matt Bevin by just over 5,000 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast.
Bevin, who had alienated voters with incendiary rhetoric and heavy-handed executive actions, was pegged as one of the least popular governors in the nation at the time.
“The previous Republican governor, honestly, was a jerk. I mean he literally talked his way out of office,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said of Bevin earlier this summer, per Politico.
A year after electing Beshear, however, Kentuckians went to the polls and voted for former President Donald Trump over then-candidate Joe Biden by nearly 26 percentage points.
Throughout the campaign, Beshear largely eschewed national political skirmishes and concentrated on state issues.
Cameron hammered Beshear over his COVID-19 policies, accusing him of shutting down schools and damaging children’s education.
A rising star on the Republican side, Cameron had the state’s considerable GOP machine at his back, along with the endorsement of Trump himself, who urged his Truth Social followers Tuesday to “VOTE for Daniel Cameron for Governor.
“It is a Vote you will be very proud of. He will never let you down!!!” the 77-year-old added.
However, Cameron was still outspent on advertising by a combination of Beshear’s campaign and the Democratic group Defending Bluegrass Values, aligned with the Democratic Governor’s Association.
On the issue of abortion, Cameron sought to tread carefully, backing the addition of a rape and incest exception to the state’s near-total ban on the procedure, which he had defended in court as AG.
Beshear largely concentrated on his economic record, crowing about Kentucky achieving its lowest unemployment rate in history last year.
Meanwhile, Cameron ripped Beshear for his more liberal maneuvers as governor, such as vetoing legislation prohibiting transgender women from playing on sports teams for biological women between sixth grade and college.
Beshear also vetoed a bill to ban so-called “gender-affirming care” for children.
The GOP-led state legislature overrode him in both instances.
