A longtime Owensboro, Kentucky, tea party activist said she refused to cast a ballot Tuesday for incumbent Republican Gov. Matt Bevin “simply because he ditched my good friend Jenean Hampton.”
Political analysts say Bevin’s decision to drop Lt. Gov. Hampton, a tea party favorite, as his running mate, wasn’t the only reason he narrowly lost Tuesday to Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear.
But in a race decided by a mere 5,100 votes, said Scott Lasley, chairman of the political science department at Western Kentucky University, “small things can matter.”
Bevin has refused to concede and is asking that the vote be recanvassed.
Running with Hampton in 2015, Bevin won her home county of Warren by 13 percentage points. But with Dr. Ralph Alvarado as his running mate, Bevin lost Warren County to Beshear Tuesday by 3 percentage points.
Without Hampton, Bevin also lost two Northern Kentucky counties — Kenton and Campbell, both former tea party strongholds — that he won handily four years ago with her on the ticket.
Although research generally shows that running mates don’t matter, University of Kentucky political scientist Stephen Voss said female candidates of late have done well, and “all other things being equal, Bevin would have been better off with a female running mate.”
Republican political consultant Ted Jackson said Bevin lost because “he was not well-liked.” His dismissal of Hampton played some part in that, he said.
“She certainly has a following, and Bevin suffered from the perception or reality that she shouldn’t have been dropped or it wasn’t handled properly,” Jackson said.
Bevin’s campaign manager, Davis Paine, and Hampton did not respond to requests for comment. Hampton tweeted congratulations to Republican down-ticket victors but said nothing abut Bevin, who decided last January to run with Alvarado, a Lexington physician.
The Libertarian Party of Kentucky, whose slate of John Hicks and Ann Cormican won nearly 2 percent of the vote, claimed that it cost Bevin the election.
And the party said in a statement distributed on Twitter that “had not Matt Bevin ditched his liberty Lt Governor” for an “anti-liberty, corrupt running mate who tried to eliminate Kentucky jury trial rights … we probably would not have run a candidate.”
The trial reference was to legislation sponsored by state Sen. Alvarado — later struck down as unconstitutional by the Kentucky Supreme Court — that required plaintiffs to submit claims to screening panels before taking them to court.
“In an ideal world, we elect Libertarian candidates and advance liberty,” the statement said. “Failing that, we push mainstream candidates toward liberty to advance the cause. But if we can’t do those things, we are always happy to split the vote in a way that causes delicious tears. Tonight there are plenty of delicious tears from Bevin supporters.
“We split the vote. And we could not be more thrilled.”
The Libertarian ticket won 28,425 votes — five times the margin separating Bevin from Beshear. Although some votes could have been drawn from Beshear supporters, experts say third-party candidates usually hurt the incumbent more than the challenger.
It’s not unusual for an incumbent governor to have a different running mate the second time around. In fact, Bevin’s two predecessors — Democrat Steve Beshear and Republican Ernie Fletcher — ran with a different running mate when they sought re-election.
Bevin never explained why he dropped Hampton, Kentucky’s first African American statewide official. Asked why he made the decision to change running mates, he said: “Because I chose to run with Sen. Alvarado.”
The Bevin-Hampton ticket won the 2015 race against Jack Conway and Sannie Overly by a 53-44 margin. Beshear-Coleman defeated Bevin-Alvarado by 49.2-48.8, according to unofficial results.
Bevin’s reversal of fortune in Northern Kentucky was especially pronounced.
The Bevin-Hampton ticket won Kenton County, the state’s third-largest county, by a 57-39 margin in 2015. But with Alvarado he lost the county Tuesday by 1 point to Beshear and his running mate, Jacqueline Coleman.
Republican advocate Phyllis Sparks, a Boone County magistrate who was Donald Trump’s Kentucky coalition director in 2016 during that presidential campaign, said Hampton is well-liked in Northern Kentucky.
But Sparks attributed Bevin’s defeat there this year to his flipflop on the need for tolls on the Brent Spence Bridge, which carries Interstate 71 and 75 across the Ohio River between Covington and Cincinnati.
Bevin campaigned against tolls in 2015 but announced earlier this year during a debate that they were necessary.
Lasley, the WKU professor, said Bevin fared poorly in Warren County this year in part because he didn’t campaign there.
“If you want to win Warren County,” he said, “you have to come to Warren County.”
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Written by Andrew Wolfson. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.