The Complicated Racial Politics Around Daniel Cameron

Some Black politicians run for office with an approach that is essentially, “I happen to be Black but I don’t want to talk about that much.” Others, such as Louisville’s Charles Booker, not only embrace being defined as Black candidates but in some ways frame their political approach as being a representative for/to/of the broader Black community. Barack Obama arguably took a third route---he accepted the historic nature of being the first Black presidential nominee and president but at times expressed wariness of being cast as kind of a representative and leader of Black America. 

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron isn’t really following any of those approaches, although the Obama one is probably the closest. Likely because he is aware that he is a Republican and therefore most Black people in Kentucky probably didn’t vote for him, Cameron doesn’t present himself as a kind of representative of the views of the broader Louisville and Kentucky Black community in the way that Booker does. At the same time, Cameron has not positioned himself as a politician who just happens to be Black either. In an interview with the Courier-Journal last year, right before he formally announced his candidacy for attorney general, Cameron said, “I fully appreciate what it [his election as attorney general] could mean for Kentucky, what it could mean for the Republican Party. My identity is important to me." After he was elected last November, Cameron talked to the Wall Street Journal about the challenges of being a Black Republican and went to Atlanta to speak at a “Black Voices for Trump” event that the president attended. 

Cameron’s approach made (and probably still makes) a lot of sense. The Republican Party has long been worried about being perceived as against people of color and lacking black support in particular--and Trump has heightened those concerns for the GOP. So Cameron, by being black and embracing his racial identity, was well-positioned to not only be a major figure in Kentucky politics, as every attorney general is, but to have a major national profile as a prominent black Republican tied to both his mentor Mitch McConnell and Trump. Pre-COVID-19, you could imagine him with a major speaking slot at this year’s Republican National Convention. (I am not sure exactly what kind of convention either party will hold now.) And in the future, it was easy to imagine Cameron as a future governor, senator or U.S. attorney general. After all, he’s only 34 and is already the attorney general of a state. 

I used the past tense some in the previous paragraph for a reason: Breonna Taylor’s death has complicated what seemed like Cameron’s clear and obvious route to political stardom. Louisville-area prosecutors decided to recuse themselves from the investigation of Taylor’s death, making Cameron effectively a special prosecutor in this case. Now, Cameron has to decide if he will file charges against any of the three officers who were on the scene and shot and killed Taylor in March. I am not a criminal law expert, nor do I have all of the details of the case that Cameron’s office does. But this is not simply a legal decision (even if it should be). Cameron is a political figure and this is a politically-charged case. And the fact that Cameron is black and has not shied away from his racial identity arguably makes this case even more politically-complicated, as I will explain below. 

The big challenge for Cameron is that there are really only two paths he can take--and both are arguably politically-perilous. As I said, I don’t know the full extent of the facts of this case. But if Cameron files charges against any of the officers, that is likely to be seen by some conservatives in Kentucky as caving to the demands of Black Lives Matter activists in Kentucky and around the country who have been protesting about this case for weeks and showed up at Cameron’s house on Tuesday night. Being viewed as doing anything that pleases Black Lives Matter activists is not likely to be particularly helpful to Cameron if he is in a future Republican primary for governor or senator in Kentucky. Polling done by the firm Civiqs suggests that about 7 percent of Kentucky Republicans support the Black Lives Matter movement, compared to 74 percent who oppose it. 

Cameron sought and got the endorsement of Kentucky’s Fraternal Order of Police in his 2019 run. I don’t think charging one of these officers will help him with the FOP either. 

Also, because officers often argue that they were acting in self-defense, it is fairly rare for charges against an officer to result in a conviction. So in charging even one of these officers, Cameron has the potential of annoying his political base, offending his police allies and then losing in court. 

On the other hand, if Cameron doesn’t file charges against any of these officers or only fairly minor charges against just one of them, he faces a different problem. The people who will be most outraged by such a decision probably didn’t vote for him anyway because they are Democrats. Some of the people demanding that charges be filed against the officers, most notably Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, don’t even live in Kentucky. 

That said, Taylor’s killing is now national and international news. If Cameron essentially clears the officers of any wrongdoing, people all over the country and world are going to blast that decision and probably Cameron himself, whatever his legal justifications. That kind of negative attention would be bad for a politician of any race and from any party. But Cameron has in some ways positioned himself as a unique figure in the Republican Party because he is black. And my assumption is that Cameron is currently disliked by black voters in Kentucky less than most Republican elected officials in part because of his race and that white moderate and swing voters and even some Democratic-leaning white voters see him a bit more positively than other Republicans in part because they view him as a different kind of Republican because of his race. Being intensely criticized locally, nationally and perhaps internationally for his handling of this case, with black voices, including perhaps Beyoncé likely to be his harshest critics, is going to weaken Cameron’s positioning as a different kind of Republican. 

In short, there is probably no good political decision here for Cameron--a rising star in American politics who is probably looking for a decision that is right from a moral and legal standpoint but also good for him politically. So if he seems to be stalling in terms of making a decision on whether or not to charge the officers (as his critics suggest), that would make sense. If he is very frustrated at protesters coming to his house, as he seemed on Tuesday night, that would make sense too. 

Daniel Cameron had an unusually-easy path to become attorney general. But he is facing an unusually-hard decision only seven months into his tenure. 

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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