Inside Kentucky Republicans’ War on Andy Beshear’s COVID-19 Policies
In an ideal world, efforts to stop the spread of a deadly virus would be not partisan at all--or would at least be bipartisan. Alas, we are not living in that world nationally, or in Kentucky.
Andy Beshear won last November’s governor’s race, mainly because Matt Bevin was widely disliked. Kentucky Republicans likely expected both that Beshear would be easy to beat in 2023 and wouldn’t be that consequential of a governor anyway, since Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and can override a governor’s veto with a simple majority. Then, COVID-19 hit America and Kentucky. Beshear acted aggressively to stop the spread of the virus, mostly notably ordering the closure of non-essential businesses. His handling of the virus outbreak got national praise. And Kentuckians seemed to satisfied too--one non-partisan survey conducted in April suggested that 81 percent of Kentuckians approved of Beshear’s handling of the virus outbreak.
But Beshear seems to have gotten too powerful and popular for Kentucky’s Republican political class--and they are determined to put him back in his place. In electoral terms, that approach is entirely logical for a major party in a two-party state. What is good electorally for Beshear is generally bad for Kentucky Republicans and what is bad for Beshear is good for Kentucky Republicans. But that kind of zero-sum thinking doesn’t apply well to fighting a deadly virus. The Kentucky Republicans’ attacks on Beshear’s COVID-19 policies have the potential of making it harder to fight the virus.
It’s worth understanding exactly what Kentucky Republicans are doing. It’s essentially a three-pronged strategy to attack Beshear and limit his ability to govern on issues surrounding COVID-19.
Lawsuits
There is an almost endless barrage of lawsuits against Beshear’s COVID policies, with conservative-leaning activists and Attorney General Daniel Cameron leading the charge on them. Did Beshear overreach in terms of some of his executive policies, particularly his attempts to limit certain kinds of church services? Maybe.
But Cameron is now trying to block Beshear’s requirement that people around the state wear masks, even as the Republican attorney general says he doesn’t actually disagree with the idea of wearing masks. (He has suggested mask-wearing should be encouraged but voluntary.) Medical experts basically universally agree that mask-wearing could limit the spread of the virus. Cameron has acknowledged publicly both that he often wears a mask indoors and that his staffers do. (So Cameron is functionally encouraging people around him to wear masks, while potentially signaling to Kentuckians who are around other people that mask-wearing is not that important.)
A “letter” to Beshear from House Speaker David Osborne, Senate President Robert Stivers and Cameron last week illustrated the partisanship from the GOP side at play here. The letter (it was released publicly and functioned as a press release) blasted Beshear not for mandating mask-wearing (the letter did not take a position on the actual policy) but for not consulting Cameron, Osborne and Stivers before doing so. We are in the midst of a major health emergency. Perhaps the burden should be on these Republicans to state clearly an actual objection to the actual policy before complaining about how or if they were consulted about the policy. Perhaps Beshear should be largely relying on the advice of medical experts in figuring out his COVID policies, not a trio of politicians. (I think it’s likely that Beshear expected that these three were going to find reasons to oppose a mask-wearing mandate no matter what and he thinks that mandate might save lives, so the consultation would likely not have served much purpose.)
Ruling on a lawsuit supported by Cameron and Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, who is also a Republican, a Kentucky circuit court judge last week issued a very broad, unusual ruling that not only blocked a Beshear restriction on how some businesses could operate but effectively suggested Beshear could not issue any more executive orders on any policy regarding COVID. The entire episode had the appearance of venue-shopping. (Venue-shopping is the term for when plaintiffs look to file lawsuits in areas where judges are likely to issue favorable rulings).
Brian Privett, the circuit court judge who issued the ruling, was appointed to his post by Bevin in 2018. Per the Courier-Journal’s Joe Sonka, Privett seems to have very recently deleted his Twitter account, which showed a picture of he and Quarles at an event together.
2. Public pressure/Partisan-ization
The protests organized by conservative activists in April during Beshear’s COVID-19 daily press conferences, the constant criticism from Republican officials that he is overreaching and the lawsuits are designed to deter Beshear from taking actions on COVID. Republicans know that even if they can’t stop Beshear from issuing new executive orders, this kind of criticism will take its toll, both making the governor more reluctant to announce new policies and the public more skeptical of them.
Those are all normal political tactics, used by politicians in both parties, in Kentucky and around the country. That said, we are in an unusual situation right now. All of these Republican moves serve to make these issues more partisan, as if mask-wearing is a Democratic position and not wearing a mask is what a true conservative should do. (I should emphasize that Sen. Mitch McConnell has been strongly encouraging mask-wearing. This article is more about Kentucky Republicans who work on state policy.)
3. Attempts to limit his power
Kentucky’s state legislature ended its session in April. So Beshear has largely been governing on his own. Kentucky has had a fairly limited outbreak of COVID, so it might be natural to people in the state to praise the governor or at least not overly criticize what he has done in terms of the virus outbreak.
Not so much. Chris McDaniel, a Republican state senator, has written and publicly released a bill that calls for the Kentucky legislature to come back into session any time Kentucky is under a state of emergency in the future. Savannah Maddox, a Republican state representative, has a similar proposal. Damon Thayer, one of the top Republicans in the state senate, has already announced that limiting the executive powers of the governor will be a major focus of next year’s session of the state legislature that starts in January.
“I think the biggest thing we're hearing from our constituents is they didn't know the governor had this much power when the legislature's not in session," Thayer said recently, according to WLKY News. "What we're hearing from our constituents is they think that the state of emergency, for whatever reason, should have a limited number of days, whether it be 15 or 25 or 30. Then the governor would have to confer with the general assembly and seek the joint agreement of the General Assembly to continue the state of emergency."
If you are skeptical that large numbers of rank and file Kentuckians (as opposed to a small but loud group of conservative activists) are contacting Thayer with specific ideas to limit states of emergency in Kentucky to either 15 or 25 days, that makes two of us.
Data about public opinion in Kentucky contradicts Thayer. About 60 percent of Kentuckians approve of Beshear’s handling of the virus outbreak, according to polling conducted late last month from the non-partisan COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States. That is a substantial drop from the 80 percent support of Beshear’s COVID policies that this survey found in April, but still fairly high. A survey conducted from July 7-10 by Garin-Yang-Hart Research Group found that 69 percent of Kentuckians agree with Beshear’s handling of COVID-19 and that 73 percent approve of the mask-wearing requirement.
Garin-Yang-Hart is a Democratic polling firm and this survey was conducted for the Kentucky Democratic Party. So I am wary of giving it too much weight. That said, it’s a reputable polling firm, and those poll findings line up with other surveys nationally that show rank and file Republicans are generally more supportive of aggressive actions to stop the spread of COVID-19 than Republican elites.
So essentially, the Republicans are planning to strip powers from Beshear to punish him for his handling of COVID. And this power stripping is not isolated to COVID. Pre-COVID, Kentucky Republicans had already introduced four other bills to take away powers from the governor’s office, such as taking away the governor’s ability to appoint a transportation secretary. Republicans in Frankfort weren’t really trying to strip the governor’s office of power from 2015-19, when Bevin was in charge.
Perhaps these bills won’t pass in January. But these bills are likely to have the effect of making Beshear more hesitant from now till December to push executive policies to help fight the virus, worried such orders might hasten the eventual removal of his powers.
I should conclude by emphasizing that I am not sure all of Beshear’s decisions around COVID-19 have been the right ones. And perhaps Kentucky has not had a worse COVID-19 spread simply because of luck or because its residents are taking measures to stop the virus break, so Beshear shouldn’t get too much credit.
That said, we are witnessing, from Kentucky Republicans, the kind of partisan warfare that might make sense in a debate over tax policy or say, Obamacare. I doubt Beshear has been eager to close businesses, limit church services and order people to wear masks. He probably knows a lot of people who like attending church, want to keep their businesses open and don’t want to wear masks. He might be one of those people himself. (We know, pre-COVID, that Beshear regularly attended church.) Over the last few months in Kentucky, a party tightly linked with people skeptical of government regulations and tightly linked with major businesses and wealthy individuals has adamantly opposed new government regulations and limits on businesses. In short, Kentucky Republicans have taken their pre-existing ideology and political alliances and adapted them to COVID-19, as if this is any other partisan battle.
In contrast, unless Beshear’s upcoming campaigns will funded by companies that make masks and he had a secret plan to close churches that he was able to implement because of COVID, it would seem that he is reacting to an unusual situation by trying to adapt to it, without necessarily bringing a ton of his preexisting ideological or political commitments to the issue.
Thanks for reading.
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