Democrat Fran Woodring takes a break from herding neighbors and friends into the John Arnold Arena to hustle back to her black Chrysler SUV.
The 63-year-old antique dealer has lived in Union County since 1975, when she worked in the clerk’s office. She remembers at the time it was impossible to find a Republican voter to work the polls in the area.
“The country has changed,” Woodring said. “Western Kentucky has changed. It doesn’t seem like, politically, it’s part of the same state I grew up in.”
Woodring puffs on a Marlboro Light as she and others at a dinner organized by four county parties await Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, who is taking on Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in the governor’s race.
Like many who attended last week’s dinner with Beshear, she is fretting the election after a Mason-Dixon poll showed Beshear tied with Bevin, who critics regularly mention is ranked as one of the least popular governors in the country.
And then there is the looming shadow of President Donald Trump, who is expected to make a big splash in Lexington on the governor’s behalf a day before the Nov. 5 election.
“This is a must-win for the Democratic Party,” Woodring said.
Beshear arrives at the arena after sundown to a healthy applause of mostly elderly voters. He approaches a line of people that snakes out into a hallway filled with tables covered in pork chops, coleslaw and dessert.
“I just want people fired up,” Beshear tells one supporter. “If our energy is bigger, our turnout is bigger. So, anything that creates urgency, I’m for.”
Beshear is a methodical campaigner who shakes every hand, walks to every table, and snaps every selfie. He delivers a disciplined stump speech that strikes all the Democratic sweet spots on health care, education and the economy.
But the largest applause typically comes from anything slamming Bevin.
At one point a group of women approaches to ask the attorney general about the televised debate days earlier in Lexington.
Beshear’s smile flips to a frown and he shakes his head disapprovingly. The governor had laid into Beshear during the discussion, saying he was a “fraud” for touting public education while sending his own children to private school.
Beshear tells the three women about the exchange, and they gasp.
“He’s attacking my kids now,” he says.
Beshear’s stop in Sturgis, with a population of roughly 1,800 people, is as much a bet on rural Kentuckians being fed up with Bevin’s brash leadership style as it is a hat tip to a region once known by state Democrats as their Rock of Gibraltar.
The campaign strategy is aimed at persuading rural voters that even if the national Democratic Party is leaning too far to the left, Beshear 2.0 cares more and knows more about their local problems.
“If you look at the pillars of rural communities and rural economies across the commonwealth, it’s public education and health care,” Beshear campaign manager Eric Hyers told The Courier Journal. “In many areas, the public school is the key economic driver and health care is, too — and on these two issues, Matt Bevin has failed working families and rural Kentucky.”
Beshear dotted his stump speech in Sturgis with those regionally specific concerns. He talked about the need to complete the Interstate 69 project before pivoting to the need to lower prescription drug prices.
Many of the voters in attendance said they loathe Bevin for pushing a work requirement on able-bodied Medicaid recipients; for trying to convert public employee pensions into a 401(k)-style plan; and for his put-downs of public educators and their union leaders.
“It’s tragic when you have the leader of a state be so negative, nasty, and hateful to a group that educates our children,” said Ann Pritchett, 62, of Henderson.
Camila Hasan, 65, who also lives in Henderson, agreed Bevin’s leadership style is troubling. But she warned the attorney general against going down the same path, despite the governor’s reputation.
“I think he needs to be on the local television channels being positive,” she said. “I don’t think he really needs to attack Bevin, but he needs to present what he’s standing for and how he will improve Kentucky.”
Attorney Andrew Powell, 36, a Democrat who serves as nearby Henderson County’s property valuation administrator, said Beshear needs to remain focused on his message without being pulled into the Trump trap.
“The attorney general is doing a good job focusing on issues that impact everyday Kentuckians and that he’s here to serve people and not Washington,” he said. “I think on the other side there are talking points the governor is using to create an emotional stir in people that are completely not applicable to everyday life of most Kentuckians.”
The thinking among GOP operatives is that in the final weeks, however, none of the anti-Bevin sentiment will matter. Even if Kentuckians are ruffled by the governor’s past comments or style, they agree with him politically and are returning to the fold.
“There’s a lot of Kentucky voters I don’t think would sit down for a beer with Matt Bevin,” said Tres Watson, a Kentucky Republican strategist. “They don’t necessarily identify with him; however, they approve of the policies and platform he’s put forth, and that’s why they vote for him.”
The Mason-Dixon poll found 45% approve and 48% disapprove of Bevin’s job performance, but that is better than 10 months ago, when he had a job approval of 38% versus a 53% disapproval.
Watson said Democrats are misreading polls when they look at approval as a sign that voters are with them on policy.
“You see people who say ‘I don’t necessarily like this person, but I want them to lead,’” he said. “At the end of the day, you’re not voting for a best friend or a golf buddy, you’re voting for a governor.”
Bevin appears to be embracing the reputation that he’s combative with Democrats and the press, and his campaign has fueled an overall GOP strategy that is open about nationalizing the state race on issues of immigration and abortion.
Trump’s possible impeachment also appears to be galvanizing conservative voters at the right time.
One thing Beshear noticeably avoids mentioning on the campaign trail is Trump, who won Union County in 2016 by carrying roughly 80% of the vote.
“The president did well in some of these counties, but support for Trump does not equal support for Bevin — as you are seeing in data, on the ground and (from) folks telling us all the time,” Hyers said.
The Beshear campaign has integrated Trump into its strategy, offering up a TV ad featuring two voters who plan to back the president in 2020 but have pledged they won’t support Bevin.
Beshear is hoping Union County voters mirror the state’s political trend of the past two decades. While it has gone for Republicans in federal elections, the county has traditionally backed Democrats running for one of the statewide constitutional offices.
In 2015, Union County was one of 14 that voted in favor of Bevin’s Democratic opponent. Beshear’s father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, trounced Republicans in both of his elections in the county.
The attorney general is personally betting on his campaign platform, which he said speaks to improving the region. But a family name going back generations doesn’t hurt, either.
“My family roots are right here in Western Kentucky, and folks know that I will work for them each and every day as governor and not just show up around reelection,” Beshear told The Courier Journal while exiting the arena. “… Whether people are going to vote for me in Western Kentucky because of the Beshear name or our roots, or because our vision is going to reinvigorate this economy, we’ll take it either way.”
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Written by Phillip M. Bailey. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.