The Popularity of Andy Beshear, Rand Paul, Cops in Schools, and Racial Equity

The Courier-Journal and other outlets lately have been doing a lot of polling about issues and ideas in Louisville and Kentucky. That’s good. Polling gives a better gauge of broader public opinion than social media, talking to random people on the street or just relying on the views of elected officials and others with a lot of power. 

That said, there are two caveats. First of all, we still have very few polls, so there’s no way to figure out if a given survey is an outlier. In contrast, on the national scene, it’s fairly clear that about 42 percent of Americans approve of Biden and about 52 percent disapprove, because a bunch of outlets release polling each week. Secondly, polling responses are very subject to the wording of the question, particularly on complicated issues. “Do you approve or disapprove of Biden?” or “Will you vote for Biden or Trump?” are fairly straightforward questions. But “Do you support the teaching of ‘critical race theory?” vs. “Do you support a full and complete teaching of America’s racial history, even the negative parts?” are likely to get different results, even if we are talking about the same underlying issue. 

With that said, let’s look at some recent poll results: 

1. Andy Beshear—60 percent approval statewide, 32 percent disapproval ,Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy, Jan 19-22. 

I think the governor has done a great job. But considering that President Biden is polling in the low 40s nationally and likely in the 30s in Kentucky, this number jumped out at me. But surveys conducted during the early stages of the pandemic also showed Beshear’s popularity as being pretty high—so I suspect his approval is at least in the 50s. 

But that doesn’t mean that 60 percent of Kentuckians will vote for Beshear in November 2023—and perhaps not even the 50 percent or so that he would need to win a second term. By November 2023, the Kentucky Republican Party will have spent months blasting Beshear as a business-closing, abortion-loving, anti-white super-liberal. Beshear’s approval rating almost certainly will go down when Kentucky Republicans make it their mission to tank his approval rating. 

Also, it’s entirely possible that Republican-leaning voters will “approve” of Beshear in November 2023, but still back the GOP gubernatorial nominee, particularly if it’s someone who is relatively-normal (not Matt Bevin.) Partisanship is really strong in America right now. The poll suggested 39 percent of Kentucky Republican voters approve of Beshear. There is no way 39 percent of Kentucky Republicans will vote for Beshear. 

2. Rand Paul 55 percent statewide, Charles Booker 39 percent, Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy, Jan 19-22. 

In 2020, Trump won 62-36 over Biden, McConnell won 58-38 over McGrath, In most of the statewide races in 2019, Republicans won about 60 percent of the vote, Democrats about 40 percent. So this finding lines up with that. Paul is nutty, so it’s likely some Republican-leaning voters who backed Trump and McConnell don’t like him. So it makes sense that he is below 60.  Booker is a Democrat, his last name is not Beshear and he is not running against Bevin, so he will have a hard time getting over 40 percent. 

But the key dynamic here is that the campaign has not really started yet. I think it’s possible that 2022 ends up being a really anti-Biden, anti-Democratic year and that the results in Kentucky are closer to 65-35 or even 70-30. 

Alternatively, a Booker win (or even getting to 45 percent) is likely to come from him drawing new voters to the political process or a lot of Republicans staying home because they don’t like Paul. Polls this far from the election aren’t likely to catch either of those dynamics. 

One other thing about this race–Booker is taking left-wing stances in a way that McGrath did not, so I thought his campaign would be a good test of how much (if at all) a Democrat in Kentucky suffers from being a true progressive. But Booker has two disadvantages compared to McGrath: 2022 is likely to be a worse year for Democrats than 2020, and Democrats across the country appear to have learned a lesson about sending money to Senate Democratic candidates in Kentucky. McGrath raised $2.5 million in her first day as a candidate back in 2019, Booker raised $2.3 million in his first six months as a candidate in 2021. 

McGrath wasted millions of dollars on boring tv ads. I suspect Booker would have had better ads and a fairly innovative get-out-the-vote effort if he had been able to run a campaign with as much money as McGrath had in 2020, but we’ll never know. 

3. 31 percent of Louisvillians say the Breonna Taylor protests helped the city, 52 percent said they hurt the community, Suffolk University/USA Today/Courier-Journal poll, November 10-15 

I tend to think this kind of question conflates different issues. You could think that the protests were justified but that they portrayed the city and its police in a negative light and likely made it harder for Louisville to recruit companies like Amazon who might be wary of a community with such clear racial tension and policies that many black residents consider discriminatory. 

“Did you approve or disapprove of the protests after the killing of Breonna Taylor” would have been a better question. 

That said, it’s worth emphasizing that even a question with that framing would have found the obvious—white people and Republicans were more opposed to the protests than black people and Democrats. In this survey, black people (48-36) and Democrats (50-38) were more likely to say the protests helped the city, while Republicans (76-11) and white people (61-25) were likely to say the protests hurt. 

Black-led civil rights protests are often unpopular at the time they take place. In a poll conducted before the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his most famous speech, 23 percent of Americans viewed the event favorably, compared to 63 percent who viewed it unfavorably. And fierce Republican opposition to the 2020 protests was guaranteed once Fox News and conservative politicians started depicting the protests here and around the country as very violent and out of control and downplaying the deeper issues at play. 

4. 20 percent in Louisville support the “defund the police” concept, compared to 70 percent who oppose it. 47 percent support cutting some police funding and moving that money to social services, compared to 46 percent who oppose that idea. Suffolk University/USA Today/Courier-Journal poll, November 10-15 

When Joe Biden and other center-left Democrats constantly declare that they don’t support “defunding the police,” I find it akin to demagoguery and or at best, “let me show you how moderate I am” political posturing. Outside of a few weeks in the summer of 2020, very few people have ever called for a large-scale defunding of police and even that already-small bloc has shrunk from two years ago. But when you get to the real-world debate, whether some police funding should be reduced and reallocated, the conversation gets much more complicated and contested. 

You see, in this question, how word choices and framing make such a big difference. 

There is a strong case that modest police reforms don’t actually stop police misconduct and that only a reduction of the broader policing apparatus will reduce police abuses. (Look at what happened in Minneapolis this week.) This is why I am skeptical of Biden’s “more police, less police brutality” stance. There is also a strong case that the crime reduction strategy currently used in most American cities concentrates too much money in policing and not enough in housing, economic development, social services and other programs to keep people from feeling like crime is their best or only way to a better life. 

5. 57 percent in Louisville agreed with having police officers in public schools, 37 percent opposed that; 68 percent said that there should be more public spending to achieve “racial equity” in Louisville, 23 percent opposed that idea. Suffolk University/USA Today/Courier-Journal poll, November 10-15 

I’m personally leery of officers in schools. I doubt many people have super-firm views on this issue, but I think it’s an idea that intuitively sounds good, particularly if there isn’t an alternative provided. So the opponents of that proposal unsurprisingly have struggled to defeat it. 

I’m very supportive of racial equity efforts. But I”m a bit skeptical that 68 percent of people in Louisville will support such efforts when they learn what they are in more detail. Here’s a clue. The poll asked respondents their views on our school integration efforts, which are one giant racial equity project. About 30 percent of people said our school integration efforts are helping improve public education in the community, about 30 percent said they were harming public education, about 40 percent weren’t sure or said they didn’t have a positive or negative impact. 

Thanks for reading. Please flag me if there are typos, as I can fix those for the online version of the newsletter. If there is an issue you want to read more about, an important thing happening in Louisville or Kentucky that you know about but isn’t getting covered much or an interesting person that I should interview, you can reach me at perrylbacon@gmail.com. You can sign up for this newsletter here.