Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was successful in convincing voters in his deep Republican state to look past the foibles of the national Democratic Party and President Joe Biden and elect him to a second term Tuesday.
Beshear was declared the winner by Decision Desk HQ on Tuesday night. With 54% of the precincts counted, Beshear had 52.7% of the vote compared to 47.3% for Republican Daniel Cameron, the state’s attorney general who was backed by former President Donald Trump.
Cameron, the state’s first Black attorney general, was trying to become the first Black Republican elected governor in the U.S. Cameron was hoping with the backing of Trump, who carried Kentucky by almost 30 points (62.5%-32.7%) in 2016 and nearly 26 points (62.1%-36.2%) in 2022, could elevate him into the governorship.
Entering Tuesday, Republicans held every statewide office in Kentucky, and the party has veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. Also, Republicans hold five of six U.S. House seats and both U.S. Senate seats.
Beshear, who was Kentucky’s attorney general before Cameron, campaigned on guiding the state to record high economic development and historically low unemployment during his term, adding the state is poised for more growth. He pushed back against his challenger's efforts to turn the election into a referendum on Biden, at one point dismissing party affiliation as a box to be checked off.
“This attorney general knows that if this race is about me versus him, that you know who I am and how I’ve led and how I’ve shown up every day,” Beshear said during one of their debates.
Although much of Beshear's first term was dominated by his response to a series of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, his reelection campaign often focused on the dire warnings about the future of abortion rights. He portrayed Cameron as too extreme on the issue, pointing to his support for the state’s abortion ban, which lacks exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.
Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, who was reelected Tuesday, said voting was steady across the state, adding voter turnout was about 45%, keeping in line with last year’s numbers.
“We had people ready at 6 a.m. around the state to vote,” he said, according to Louisville Public Media. “Lines formed already when the polling sites opened. That's typical. That happens every single election.”
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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