Mistakes

President Trump pledged to surrender power and leave the White House in January 2021 if he is defeated in November, in an interview that aired on Friday. (Like all previous presidents who lost reelection.) The fact that (1) he was asked this question and (2) I think it’s significant and important to highlight his answer, tells you a lot about where we are in America right now. 

The president said yesterday that all conversations with him are classified, and that one of his ex-advisers should face criminal charges if he publishes a book that includes private conversations he had with Trump.

Republican elected officials in Iowa and Texas are taking intentional steps to make it harder for people to vote in their states. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that people should not be fired simply because they are gay or transgender--but the Court still hasn’t decided if businesses and individuals can fire people who are gay and transgender and argue it is an expression of the individual or business’s religious freedom. 

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter sent a letter on Sunday to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, demanding that he file charges against the three officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor. Whether the officers that night violated existing practices and procedures of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department or whether they generally followed existing practices and procedures that should be changed (or something in between those two) is obviously the subject of the investigation of Taylor’s death being conducted by Cameron and his office. 

In a perfect world, I think decisions on individual cases would not become too politicized. You would not want these three officers to be punished more harshly than other officers who have conducted themselves similarly in these kinds of cases simply because one of the world’s most famous entertainers issued a statement in this particular instance. 

That said, this case is already intensely politicized. And Cameron is hardly some just-the-facts figure. He is a prominent, up-and-coming politician in a Republican Party that is very tightly-aligned with America’s law enforcement community. I assume Cameron is getting some private pressure from fellow Republicans and law enforcement officials to not be overly aggressive in prosecuting the officers, lest he strengthen the narrative that law enforcement officials in Louisville and Kentucky treat black people unfairly. And even if such pressure is not directly being applied, being cast as anti-police isn’t a great thing if you are looking to advance your career in GOP politics. 

So Knowles-Carter may be less interjecting political pressure on Cameron in this case (it was probably already there) and more balancing out that pressure and making sure he is feeling it from people wary of law enforcement officials, as well as those in his circle who are generally inclined to defend law enforcement officials. 

Protesters blocked some streets in downtown Louisville on Monday, arguing this was an escalation of their actions because the city has not yet fired the three officers who killed Taylor. 

Lots of key people have not endorsed a candidate in the Kentucky U.S. Senate Democratic primary, which is on June 23. State Rep. Charles Booker has the support of national progressive groups and figures like Bernie Sanders, as well as many progressive and more moderate state legislators in Kentucky. Amy McGrath has the backing of the national Senate Democrats’ campaign arm (so Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and lots of donors.) 

But some notable figures are staying on the sidelines. If you’re running as the moderate, “electable” Democrat, as McGrath is, you probably want ideologically-similar figures in the state to back you, most notably, any of the Beshears (Gov. Andy, ex-Gov. Steve, former First Lady Jane). If you’re a black candidate and/or taking very progressive stands, like Booker, ideally you would hope for endorsements from say Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. (It’s not simply that Abrams, Cory Booker and Harris are black--they have all talked about the importance of having more black people in jobs like governor and U.S. senator.) But Booker, Harris and Warren put out statements praising McGrath when she launched her candidacy in July, months before Booker entered the race. So it might be hard for them to embrace Booker now. I’m sure either candidate would like the support of popular Louisville-area congressman John Yarmuth, who is in the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill (a group focused on electability) but is fairly progressive himself. 

Why aren’t those endorsements happening? 1. I suspect some of these people like both candidates, love neither and don’t feel like this is a race where they need to interject themselves in the primary, as opposed to rallying around the winner, who will have very long odds of defeating Mitch McConnell. 2. Everyone in the paragraph above I would say is in the “Democratic establishment”--so they would have to really feel strongly about Booker to endorse him, since Schumer and the national party are behind McGrath and they might not want to piss off the powerful Schumer. 3. Finally, we haven’t had any independent polls of this race, and the limited data that we have suggests McGrath is winning. I suspect if Booker were 20 points ahead, Abrams and Harris would endorse him. Instead, such an endorsement has the potential of making them look dumb if Booker loses by 20 points, which I think is still a possibility. 

Mistakes/Missteps?

Too often, the media focuses on what has gone wrong, particularly involving politicians. So this newsletter will try to highlight when a politician does something right. At the same time, it’s important for the media to be really invested in its role as a watchdog of elected officials. This newsletter will try to play that role as well. Here are some recent moves by key officials in the state that deserve serious scrutiny: 

1. Gov. Beshear calling in the Kentucky National Guard amid the Taylor protests 

Gov. Andy Beshear has shown real leadership in terms of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak. Before this was the obvious playbook for every governor, he was holding daily press conferences about the virus, strongly encouraging people to social distance and finally closing many businesses in the state. His actions almost certainly saved lives---perhaps thousands. 

That said, Beshear’s decision to call up the National Guard amid the protests and rioting in Louisville after the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Taylor may have played a key role in ending the life of David McAtee, a 53-year-old black man who owned a barbecue restaurant in West Louisville. 

After midnight on June 1, McAtee was at his restaurant. Law enforcement officials fired some kind of pepper balls in McAtee’s general direction, he fired at least one gun shot at the officers, the National Guard officers and local police fired many shots at him, and one of the bullets from a National Guard member killed McAtee. There is some dispute about what exactly happened and why. Did the law enforcement officials’ behavior and use of pepper balls leave McAtee threatened enough that he fired a shot essentially in self-defense and then they reacted by ending his life? Or was the conduct of the officers and the National Guard appropriate? 

What’s fairly clear is that 1. Louisville was having protests because some officers, instead of de-escalating a situation, had killed someone (Taylor) 2. Beshear brought in the National Guard in part to de-escalate the situation around the protests of Taylor 3. The National Guard members not only didn’t de-escalate with McAtee, but escalated enough to kill him. 

Beshear has said he does not regret sending the National Guard to Louisville that night. At the same time, the day after McAtee died, Beshear announced that he was reducing the National Guard’s role in dealing with the protests. The governor’s action certainly implied that the National Guard was doing more harm than good in Louisville. 

Beshear barely won the governor’s race and was helped by near universal support among black Kentuckians, a huge number of whom live in Louisville. I wonder if he owes them more contrition for his decision to bring in the National Guard. 

2. Cameron aligning himself with a church opposing COVID-19 restrictions

In late April, with conservatives in the state starting to get increasingly frustrated with COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Beshear, Cameron started blasting the restrictions. At a press conference urging Beshear to lift restrictions on churches meeting in-person, as opposed to having services online, Cameron was joined by Jeff Fugate, pastor of Clays Mill Baptist Church in Nicholasville, a city in central Kentucky. Fugate wanted his church to resume in-person services. 

It’s an open question about whether Beshear or any politician should ever impose any real limits on religion or religious practices, which are protected by the First Amendment. So Cameron was probably on solid legal ground. And Cameron emphasized that he was not saying any church necessarily should have in-person services. That said, Beshear talks about his Christianity and church-going constantly---he is not someone looking to stop people from going to church because he is anti-Christian. Cameron’s behavior had the appearance of grandstanding. 

Earlier this month, more than a dozen members of Clays Mill got COVID-19, after the church had started holding in-person services. The church then started meeting online again. We can’t prove that the coronavirus spread happened because the church was meeting in-person. And it’s legally different, as Cameron and Fugate might argue, for the church to be barred by the government from having in-person services as opposed to the church choosing not to have in-person services. 

That said, did Cameron, looking for an opportunity to attack Beshear and show his conservative bonafides, make an unwise move? 

3. Cameron hiring an ex-Bevin legal adviser 

In his final days as Kentucky’s governor, Matt Bevin issued some pardons that were so controversial that they became international news and the Courier-Journal eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of them. Cameron, who was elected in the November 2019 contest that denied Bevin a second term, opted to hire Steve Pitt, who had been Bevin’s general counsel, as a top adviser. Pitt stepped down last week after reporting from the Courier-Journal’s Joe Sonka showed that Pitt had personally recommended one of Bevin’s more controversial pardons. 

I assume Kentucky has lawyers who clearly had no connections to Bevin’s pardons that Cameron could have hired? 

Thanks for reading. 

This is an occasional newsletter focusing on government and elections but really power in Louisville and Kentucky, helping explore who has it, who is gaining it, who is losing it and why. You can subscribe here. 

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