Gov. Matt Bevin was using coded language to refer to minority voters when he blamed his election loss on liberals “harvesting votes” in urban areas, political experts say.
“You often hear that when people speak about minority communities, they will say ‘urban areas’ and such,” said Dewey Clayton, a political science professor at the University of Louisville. “And they use that term ‘urban’ almost to be synonymous with African American voters.”
On Wednesday, Bevin appeared on several radio shows and said he had trouble in his reelection bid against Gov.-elect Andy Beshear because Democrats increased voter turnout in urban centers such as Louisville, Lexington and Covington.
“The left, those who think of a different ideological bent, they are getting so good at harvesting votes in the urban communities,” Bevin said, pointing to “densely populated” areas like college campuses and public housing complexes.
Ballot harvesting, or collecting and submitting absentee or mail-in ballots by voters or workers, is essentially illegal in Kentucky. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, whose office oversaw the November election, said Bevin’s comments had “no basis in fact or reality.”
Elizabeth Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the Bevin administration, did not immediately respond to a phone call and email Thursday seeking comment.
Clayton said he isn’t sure of Bevin’s intentions but was “a little surprised to see that language being used.”
But he said Bevin’s comment “reeks of dog-whistle politics,” when someone uses coded language to send a message to the general population that has an additional or separate meaning for a targeted group. The dog-whistle phrase is a reference to the devices, which emit a tone that can be heard by dogs but is inaudible to humans.
Clayton said this coded language allows those who send the message to “feign a degree of ignorance” if confronted on the matter.
Bevin’s comments raised concerns outside Kentucky as well. Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for The New York Times, said in a tweet on Wednesday morning: “Bevin is simply saying the quiet part loud, that the votes of urban dwellers — and blacks in particular — are less legitimate than the votes of white rural and exurban voters.”
For Stephen Voss, an associate professor of politics at the University of Kentucky, Bevin’s remarks hinted at another baseless claim of voter fraud. When requesting a recanvass of the votes after narrowly losing to Beshear, Bevin suggested there were “significant” voting irregularities.
No evidence was produced, and Bevin conceded following the recanvass. He will leave office Tuesday.
Though Voss said that it is natural for candidates to wonder why they lose and that both parties criticize aspects of the electoral system when they fall short, he believes Bevin’s comments were “inappropriate” and “dangerous.”
“Voter turnout in urban areas was very high and hostile to Bevin,” Voss said. “Clearly, the Democratic Party succeeded in mobilizing their ground game and getting a high turnout in those places.”
Accusations of dog-whistle politics are not new for Kentucky. In 2010, when weighing in on false accusations of then-President Barack Obama being a Muslim, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “The president says he’s a Christian. I take him at his word.”
Several commentators said McConnell was using a dog whistle in this situation, potentially leaving room for people to think that the Republican senator from Kentucky believed Obama to be a Muslim.
More recently, people accused Democratic Attorney General candidate Greg Stumbo of using coded language this past summer at Fancy Farm when referring to his African American opponent, now Attorney General-elect Daniel Cameron.
“The attorney general’s office is always open to children, so they can see how we run the office,” Stumbo said at the time. “But Daniel, we don’t let children run the thing.”
There is a long history, especially in the South, of African American adults being referred to as “boy” or “gal” by white people. For some, Stumbo approached that line.
“Daniel is 33 years old, he’s an attorney and he understands policy,” Republican OJ Oleka, one of Cameron’s supporters, previously told The Courier Journal. “He is not a child. He’s not 15 … at worst it is a dog whistle to say we can’t let this black man be in charge of the state and we can’t have him running things.”
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Written by Ben Tobin. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.