The Beshear, Booker, Craft and Quarles Campaigns

Booker is Doing What He Said He Would 

Since he started his latest U.S. Senate run, Charles Booker has urged Congress to pass a moratorium on evictions, suggested that Democrats pass the full $3.5 trillion (over 10 years) domestic policy plan President Biden initially proposed and announced that he favors abolishing the filibuster, adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court, a national law guaranteeing women the right to an abortion and Medicare for All. His campaign is trying to build up a grassroots organization around the state, instead of heavily relying on television ads. Booker named as his campaign manager Bianca Keaton of Georgia. Keaton had worked as the local party chair in Gwinnett County in suburban Atlanta, one of the places in Georgia that has gotten increasingly blue, helping Democrats win the presidential race and both U.S. Senate seats there in 2020-21. Democrats in Georgia have done well in part by focusing on increasing the number of people of color and voters under 40 who participate in elections. 

In other words, Booker is running the left-wing/populist, heavy-on-getting-out-the-vote campaign that he promised during his unsuccessful run for the Democratic Senate nomination last year. Is this the path to victory? We don’t have polls of the race yet, but the answer is almost certainly no---Kentucky is just very-GOP-leaning in federal races. Is this a path to doing better than the 38 percent Amy McGrath won last year? We’ll see. On the one hand, Rand Paul is more controversial than McConnell, Booker is more charismatic than McGrath and Booker’s approach probably ensures that hard-core Democrats turn out to vote this year. On the other hand, the party out of the White House (so the Republicans in 2022) tends to do really well in midterm elections and Booker could draw even more opposition from non-liberals than McGrath because of his policy stands. 

Booker just announced he raised $1.7 million in the last three months, while Paul has raised more than $4 million. I don’t think this tells us anything newly-negative about Booker’s chances---McGrath raised a ton and was blown out by McConnell. Booker is an underdog because of the conservatism of the state. But it does suggest that donors, particularly outside of Kentucky, watched 2020 and are now realistic about the very, very long odds of a Democrat winning here. Remember that back in 2019 McGrath raised $2.5 million JUST ON THE FIRST DAY of her campaign against McConnell. 

Craft-Quarles 2023 

The rumor in Kentucky political circles is that Kelly Craft, who served as President Trump’s UN Ambassador, will run for governor, with Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles on the slate with her as the Lt. Gov. I’m not sure this will actually happen. (Remember we are talking about an election that will happen more than two years from today.) But I always think it’s worth knowing and understanding not just who has formally announced that they are running for a given office, but who is basically running but has not yet announced. State Auditor Mike Harmon is the only Republican so far who has formally announced his candidacy. Gov. Andy Beshear formally announced last week that he is seeking a second term. 

But Craft is taking all the steps to run. She has never served in elective office before. But and her husband Joe are big donors to GOP causes, they are tight with Mitch McConnell and Trump, and Craft is a woman in a party always looking to elevate non-white male figures. There may be an effort from McConnell and others to discourage anyone else from running and make sure that Craft wins the primary without having to move too far to the right.  

So even though most Kentuckians probably have never heard of Craft, she is perhaps the person most likely to be the state’s governor in January 2024. 

I think Beshear has done a great job. But he’s a Democrat in a very red state. I had assumed the range of possibilities for his political future were (roughly in this order) 1. Beshear loses to a McConnell-ish Republican (Daniel Cameron or Quarles), 2. He loses to a crazy Republican (Matt Bevin) or 3. He defeats a crazy Republican (Bevin.) 

With Craft in the mix, the possibilities have expanded to 4. He loses to a Republican (Craft) who might be normal in persona, but Trump-like in breaking with norms and ethics rules and 5. He defeats a Republican who had no experience and skill in running for office (Craft.) 

We Can Have Masks In Schools As Long As Andy Beshear Is Owned First. Joy. 

We had a special session of the state legislature last month in which it seemed like the biggest news was that the state legislature got rid of the masking policy put in place by the state’s board of education. But a few weeks later, it’s not that Kentucky got rid of masking in schools, at all. 165 of the 171 school districts in the state have enacted some kind of masking policy on their own. 

So if basically all public schools think students should be wearing masks, what was the point of the legislature getting rid of the statewide policy? It is not about local control---the state legislature bars local communities from minimum wage increases, new gun laws and all kinds of other policies. It was about “owning the libs.” Kentucky Republican legislators wanted a public show that they really hated a mask mandate that was imposed by the Beshear-appointed board of education and would not let it stand. But they cleared a pathway for masking to continue, because they are quite aware that is the right policy.  (Well, to be sure, some of the Republicans wanted to stop local mask requirements too, but the party leadership didn’t want to go that far.) 

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