Hey...Let's Talk About Kentucky Politics!

Hey…Let’s Talk About Kentucky Politics!  It is always interesting when I can get up in the morning and expect to see my home state mentioned on the national news.  There is always that gripping fear that the commentator will select the biggest idiot in the county for their piece and then hold them up as the average Kentuckian, but that doesn’t happen every time and hope springs eternal.  Kentucky held one of the few consequential elections in the nation yesterday and that fact was not lost on many news outlets.  For the first time in decades, Kentucky will have a Republican Governor and for the first time ever, it will have a black female as Lt. Governor.  As is the case in many political stories, this one is not exactly what it might appear to be on the surface; let’s look a bit closer.

Matt Bevin rolled into Kentucky politics by jumping up in Mitch McConnell’s face.  He calculated that McConnell’s tenuous relationship with the conservative wing of the Republican Party might translate into a conservative candidate upset in the last Republican Party Senatorial Primary.  He was wrong.  Bevin is a pretty sharp cookie, but he has a long ways to go to gain the political savvy of McConnell and he sure got schooled in that primary.  When Kentucky’s sitting Governor got term-limited and the seat opened up, the Republican Party had their candidate ready to go.  Sitting Ag Commissioner James Comer was groomed and ready to ascend to the governor’s chair.  But when a primary dust-up occurred in the Republican primary between Comer and Hal Heiner, they both got muddied up and Bevin slipped between them to steal the Republican nomination.  Truth be told, this was a huge disappointment to Kentucky Republican Party leadership.  They were very confident and comfortable with Comer and were frankly thrown for a loop when Bevin managed to upset their apple cart.  It is completely fair to characterize their support for Bevin as lukewarm and simply a case of supporting the only candidate standing.  Bevin benefited further from one of the weakest Democratic candidates in memory when Jack Conway was selected to be his opponent.  Liberal-leaning Jack Conway would fit in well in New York or Massachusetts, but was wwwaaaaayyy out of step with the average Kentuckian.  He was very liberal, an ardent supporter of gay marriage and Obamacare, and simply came across as a squishy child of privilege with no core principle.   His simple strategy was to highlight Bevin’s checkered past in the private sector and overwhelmingly carry his home county of Jefferson, which accounts for about 20 percent of Kentucky’s total vote totals.  Sometimes simple is best and in this case, this strategy made a lot of sense to a lot of people.  I think the weakness in this thinking was in overvaluing Conway, underestimating Bevin’s retail political skills, and not taking into account the average Kentuckian’s frustration with Obama and his administration.  Bevin effectively glued Conway to Obama and that was the kiss of death.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and Bevin’s decision to add Jenean Hampton as his Lt. Governor choice certainly looks smarter today than it did the day he made it.  At that time, it appeared to be a flailing move to polish up his diversity credentials and wrangle a vote or two; Ms. Hampton being an accomplished black female.  At the risk of giving Bevin too much credit, he might very well have selected Hampton in a stroke of genius.  Bevin could not win the governor’s race by losing Jefferson County in an overwhelming fashion.   By heavily advertising in Jefferson County, an urban county with a large minority segment, and prominently featuring Ms. Hampton and the issue of school choice, Bevin managed to hold Conway’s winning percentage to 58.  This is quite frankly an amazingly low number for a Democrat in Jefferson County and without doing the math, it had to contribute mightily to Bevin’s ultimate victory.  Although the Lt. Governor’s slot in Kentucky government is largely irrelevant, it is simply marvelous that we have selected an apparently qualified, minority, female candidate to serve in that capacity.  Here is hoping she meets with great success in the future.  I find it very interesting that this morning’s (the day after the election) mainstream media broadcasts hardly mention Ms. Hampton and her win.   I suppose a black female who happens to be conservative isn’t really black and female after all.

Republicans in general, both in Kentucky and nationally, should be very careful in their celebration of this win.  I would venture to say that fully one out of every four votes that Bevin received was an anti-Conway vote rather than a pro-Bevin vote.  The Republican Party, both local and national, was extremely reluctant to support Bevin and without the late, generous support of the Republican Governor’s Association, Bevin might not have won this race.  Still smarting from his primary confrontation with Bevin, McConnell was very late to the Bevin party and only at the last minute did he appear publicly with the candidate.  As the old saying goes…victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.  Today the Republicans joyously celebrate their sweeping Kentucky election wins.  They might want to pause a bit.  If things go as they might, the Republicans in Kentucky might very well seize full control of the state legislature next year; if that happens, the sitting Kentucky Governor will be in position to implement sweeping changes on this state’s landscape.  A strong case can be made that Matt Bevin is an east coast, Tea Party version of Bill Clinton/Donald Trump and nothing more than an opportunistic interloper into Kentucky politics.  He certainly has no debt to pay to the Kentucky Republican Party, given their tepid support during this campaign.  Although I celebrate Ms. Hampton’s selection, she too is not native to Kentucky and it is yet to be determined if her political instincts are rooted in Kentucky conservatism or Detroit populism.    If, in fact, the Republicans gain control of the state legislature next year, the performance and record of this new governor will have a lasting impact on the public’s perception of the Republican Party in Kentucky.  I expect that many Kentucky Republican leaders are asking themselves this question this morning: “Have we put a fox in charge of the hen house?”