AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott
With few marquee races in 2023, Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Governor Andy Beshear in typically deep-red Kentucky could be the most important single contest anywhere in the country this November.
Many Republican insiders have viewed Cameron as a rising star within the party since he first entered politics back in 2019. Cameron became the first Republican to become Kentucky Attorney General since 1948, and is also the first black man independently elected to any statewide office in Kentucky.
Almost immediately after Cameron was sworn in as attorney general, talk began swirling about a potential gubernatorial bid. That speculation proved correct when Cameron officially launched his campaign with a video announcement in May of last year.
In the one-minute clip, which begins with a quote from President Lincoln, Cameron says Beshear “does not reflect our values” and the Bluegrass State needs a governor who understands that “only faith can keep us strong.”
Cameron emerged victorious earlier this year from a hotly contested primary that also featured former U.N. Ambassador Kelly Craft and Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles – thanks in no small part to the endorsement of former President Donald Trump. Now, he looks to oust Beshear.
That will be no easy task, even for a politician as skilled as Cameron. Despite Kentucky voting for Trump by nearly 26 points in 2020 and sending a Republican supermajority to Frankfort, Beshear remains one of the most popular governors in America. According to the most recent polls, Beshear’s approval rating currently sits around 63 percent – the highest number for any Democrat governor in the country.
Cameron has leaned hard into hot-button conservative issues throughout his campaign, hoping to motivate the same coalitions that handed Trump a sweeping victory in Kentucky three years ago. Earlier this month, Cameron’s office filed an appeal to reverse a federal judge’s attempt to stop implementation of a new Kentucky law that would ban hormone blockers and so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries for minors who identify as transgender. The bill had wide support in the state, including from Cameron, but has effectively been blocked by District Judge David Hale, an Obama appointee.
Cameron has also taken a strong stance on other important issues for conservatives, including calling for the death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer, getting politics out of schools, and defending Kentucky’s pro-life laws.
At the same time, Cameron has criticized the divisive Democrat culture war issues that Beshear and others have trafficked in. He has been an outspoken critic of the liberal narrative that the United States is a “systemically racist” country, and has blasted President Joe Biden for “exploding the tensions that we have” through constant fearmongering about “white supremacists” and supposedly radical “MAGA Republicans.”
But while Cameron has intentionally avoided focusing on identity politics as a factor in this election, Kentucky Democrats have shown no such restraint. In April, the Lexington Herald-Leader, one of the most prominent outlets in the state, published a cartoon depicting Cameron as light-skinned and using Jesus Christ as a literal prop in one of his ads – not-so-subtly calling Cameron a “race traitor” and poking fun of his Christian faith.
This is far from the Leader’s first offense. According to Fox News, the paper came under fire for “depicting former President Donald Trump wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe, with Cameron, again with lighter skin than in real life, holding the tail end of the robe.” To date, the paper has not apologized for either cartoon.
Cameron has also focused in on Beshear’s record during the COVID-19 pandemic, touting his own opposition to Beshear’s lockdown policies. During the primary, Cameron stated during one debate, “I’m the only candidate in this race that can say when Andy Beshear decided to shut down churches, I went into federal court and got churches reopened in nine days. When he instituted his travel ban and told people they couldn’t leave the state without coming back in quarantine for 14 days, I went into federal court and got that executive order struck down as well.”
As attorney general, Cameron has also worked to hold the Biden administration accountable, something which is sure to play well with Kentucky voters (just 36 percent of Kentuckians approve of the job Biden is doing, while 60 percent disapprove). Over the past two years, his office filed lawsuits challenging Biden’s decisions to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and terminate Title 42, among other litigation.
If Cameron does manage to unseat Beshear this fall, it would further solidify his status as a rising star within the Republican Party. Moreover, it would be a significant victory for the GOP and an auspicious sign heading into a pivotal general election cycle next year.
Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.
