I wanted to get a perspective on Kentucky’s gubernatorial race from an expert. So I reached out to Kyle Kondik. Kyle is the managing editor of Saboto’s Crystal Ball, a non-partisan political newsletter produced at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. In his role, Kyle, who lives in Washington, D.C., closely studies congressional and gubernatorial campaigns across the country.
In my interview with him this week, Kyle explained why he views Gov. Andy Beshear as the slight favorite, what Attorney General Daniel Cameron could do to come out ahead and how the winner of this race could set himself up for a presidential or vice-presidential bid down the line. (This is a condensed version of our conversation.)
Perry: Kyle, I want to start by reading something you and your colleague J. Miles Coleman wrote on June 7.
“In Kentucky, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) won the right to challenge Gov. Andy Beshear (D) a few weeks ago. Cameron is focusing on familiar GOP themes like crime and culture in an attempt to weaken Beshear and nationalize the race, as any Republican would do in a state that is red outside of the governorship.
But Beshear has posted strong approval ratings. This one should be very close and competitive, but incumbent governors are often difficult to topple. Our best guess is a race similar to the reelection bids by Louisiana’s Edwards in 2019 and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly in 2022, red state Democrats who won second terms by between 2-3 points. In other words, Cameron is perfectly capable of winning, but we’d still rather be Beshear.”
Is that pretty much where you still stand?
Kyle: Yeah, absolutely. ….If you just look back historically, it's kind of hard to find a governor with a positive approval rating who lost reelection.
Generally speaking, these incumbent governors are pretty difficult to defeat. Last cycle, [you had] a bunch of incumbents running. The only one who lost in either the primary or the general was Steve Sisolak out in Nevada, and that was a very closely-contested race.
Cameron is perfectly capable of winning. It's just that I think Beshear is strong enough that I think it's right to look at him as a little bit of a favorite.
So you guys are saying the race “Leans Democratic.” Is that based on polls or what criteria?
It's not really based on polls, in part because there's so little out there. The only thing I can remember coming out publicly was Cygnal, the Republican firm, did a poll that had it 47-47. Generally speaking, if you've got a partisan pollster that shows a tie race, I interpret that to mean the other side is up by a little bit. There are also established numbers about Beshear's approval rating being pretty good.
I also think that Beshear has some things he can run on that are basically nonpartisan kinds of issues. If you look at some of his recent advertising, he has a testimonial from a woman who appreciated how he handled some tornadoes in Kentucky that were very significant. He just had this ad about a Republican who said he didn't vote for him last time, but was going to vote for him this time because of how he's handled small business policy. He's talking about economic development and I think about battery factories for cars and that sort of thing.
None of it has a hard partisan edge. And it's the kind of campaign that I've seen a hundred different times from Democrats running in purple and red districts and states across the country. Often it doesn't work, because the partisanship is just too hostile. But when you're an incumbent governor with good approval ratings, they're the kind of messages you'd expect to see, particularly in a state otherwise so hostile to Democrats.
Maybe you don't have a percentage on this, but how often does somebody who you all say is favored go on to lose? Often? Never?
To be perfectly candid, we missed the last two Kentucky governor's races. We had a “”Lean D” in 2015, and we had a “Lean R” in 2019. And part of what we do is we don't leave anything as a toss up at the end. So when you do that, you're going to miss some races. But part of it in 2015 was we saw some weaknesses for Matt Bevin , nd he overcame them. But then we kind of gave him the big benefit of the doubt as an incumbent Republican in a Republican-leaning state in 2019.
It's not like we've been perfect in Kentucky …But we do try to lean these things when we can, if we perceive a slight edge for one side or the other, and we do for Beshear.
What would cause you to change your rating?
I think polling is imperfect, but it is the best thing we have to try to gauge where these things are going.
The election’s still months away and maybe the national mood swings. Maybe we get to November and Biden's position is worse, maybe something bad is happening nationally. I feel like when Republicans did well in 2021 in winning Virginia and coming close in New Jersey, that was a couple of months after the collapse of the Afghan government, Biden was in the midst of a decline in his approval. That was just a bad time for Democrats to be having these elections. If those had been 2022 elections in the aftermath of Dobbs, maybe the outcome would've been different in Virginia.
So we don't necessarily know what the environment is going to be. And of course when you see some of the Republican advertising, they show Biden and they're connecting Biden to Beshear. I've seen that a ton from Republicans in races like these, where you've got a Democrat in a purple or red district or state trying to run.
It's this classic nationalization versus localization strategy. When you're on the wrong side of the partisanship in a given place, you localize. When you're on the right side, you nationalize.
What are things that would be logical for Beshear to do, that might increase his standing?
I don't know if I would be telling him to do anything different than what he's doing now, which is just to boost his own image and to present himself in a nonpartisan or post-partisan kind of way.
Flip to Cameron, anything obvious you think he'll end up doing or probably would be smart to do?
Again, I would expect the messaging to end up nationalizing to some degree and pointing out ways in which Beshear is maybe ideologically different than your average Kentucky voter, who skews more conservative.
Just as an aside, the one race I can remember from last cycle where transgender issues came up a lot was in Kansas, kind of a similar situation. You had a Democratic incumbent governor running for a second term in a red-leaning state, and Kelly was able to overcome that and ended up winning.
Clearly Republicans feel like this is an issue that they want to run on, and they feel like is a good issue for them. I just don't necessarily know how effective it is.
Is Andy Beshear the last Democratic governor of Kentucky we will have in our lifetimes?
I wouldn't go that far. A lot of states are relatively open to supporting cross-party governors. I mean, Massachusetts and Maryland had Republican governors until recently. Vermont has one now. Kansas, Louisiana, Kentucky have Democratic governors right now, but Louisiana probably will have a Republican one next year as John Bel Edwards’ term ends.
Now I will say that in the case of Beshear and Laura Kelly in Kansas and John Bel Edwards in Louisiana, their opponents gave them openings to win. A standard-issue, replacement-level Republican very well could have won in Kansas in 2018, Louisiana in 2015 and Kentucky in 2019. But Bevin had problems, David Vitter was a very weak nominee in Louisiana in 2015, and Kris Kobach was also a weak nominee in Kansas.
What you also see in all three of these states is that Daniel Cameron is a stronger candidate than Matt Bevin is, and also the opponents that Kelly and John Bel Edwards faced in their re-elections were stronger. It's just that by that point, you've got an incumbent now and so it's just a little bit harder.
The other thing I would say, I am not an expert on the relative strength of the governorships, meaning how powerful is one governorship compared to another. But in one important way, Kentucky is a weak governorship, in that the governor has veto power, but can be overruled by a simple majority vote of the state legislature. So it's very easy to override Beshear's vetoes.
So the very fact that Beshear is weak when it comes to dealing with the legislature, that may actually be politically helpful to him because the legislature essentially gets what it wants on a number of things. And so Beshear can focus on the role of the governorship and the positive impression he can make as governor. And one of those is responding to natural disasters, which is something that Beshear has gotten good marks for.
Do you think that either one of these guys has a chance to be president or vice president down the line, if they win this race?
I think that the default answer to these kinds of questions should always be no or unlikely, just because there's so many potential people who can do it, and only one person gets picked as president, one as vice president, at most every four years.
That said, I think there's a lot to like about both of them.
One thing about Beshear, and maybe this causes him problems in a reelection context, is that I don't get the sense he's particularly conservative about much. There's a difference between him and John Bel Edwards in that Edwards is not supportive of abortion rights. Beshear holds standard-issue Democratic opinions on a lot of things. Maybe that comes back to haunt Beshear in this campaign. But if Beshear wins and he's being considered for a national ticket, there aren't ideological apostasies that he needs to defend himself from, or that might disqualify him. So maybe that helps him in that regard.
And I think that there is a hunger in the Republican Party for strong non-white candidates. And I think that if Cameron got elected, he would become a pretty prominent Republican. And look, maybe Cameron loses this time and comes back and wins in four years. He's still really young.
So I could imagine him being a player in the future. Maybe he might make sense too as a future replacement for Mitch McConnell whenever McConnell steps aside.
One other thing I just wanted to add was just on Election Night, watch the returns. Beshear did about 25 points better in 2019 in Kentucky than Biden [in 2020.] Where you really see Beshear doing way better than Biden is eastern Kentucky, which is ancestrally Democratic, but just zoomed toward Trump.
You could find places in Eastern Kentucky that Beshear won that Biden lost by 50 points. So that will help tell the tale.