Can a Democrat Leading the Biden Playbook Win in Deep Red Kentucky?

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is conducting one of this year’s most intriguing political experiments: What happens when an incumbent Democrat campaigns on President Biden’s record and agenda, but never joins the party’s unpopular leader name?

Mr. Beshear is running for re-election in his deep-red state as a generic version of Mr. Biden, promoting himself as someone who led Kentucky through dark times to emerge with a strong post-Covid economy.

Like Biden, he is banking on voters’ distaste for aggressive Republican opposition to abortion, which is banned in almost all circumstances in Kentucky, and on those showing good will toward his stewardship during crises such as natural and climate disasters.

Yet he is doing what he can to separate himself from Mr Biden, whose approval ratings remain stuck at around 40 percent nationally and are much lower in Kentucky.

But Mr. Biden remains toxic in the state: a poll released Tuesday from Morning Consult found that 68 percent of Kentuckians disapproved of him, while 60 percent — including 43 percent of Republicans — approved of Mr. Beshear.

Since Mr. Beshear won the governor’s race in 2019, the number of registered Democrats in Kentucky has fallen while the number of Republicans has increased. And local Republicans think they will outperform polls after surveys underestimated support for Trump in 2020.

Kentucky voters have a knack for previewing national trends. The state’s last six gubernatorial elections predict presidential election results a year later.

On the campaign trail in the counties Mr. Trump carried — which are 118 of 120 in Kentucky — Mr. Beshear is trying to dislodge Biden from Bidenomics, the slogan much heralded by the president’s campaign. Mr. Beshear is celebrating record-low unemployment rates, a major bridge project paid for by Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill and what he says are the “two best years for economic development in our history.”

No new business development is too small. During a Monday morning stop in Richmond, Ky., Mr. Beshear cited the recent opening of a truck stop just outside the city. “We even brought a Buc-ee’s to Madison County,” he said, referring to the franchise’s first outpost in the state and a point of local pride.

What Mr. Beshear’s pitch to voters doesn’t mention is the Biden administration’s important role in his resume. Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill has done just that spent $5.2 billion on at least 220 projects in Kentucky, including $1.1 billion for high-speed internet and $1.6 billion to rebuild the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Cincinnati to the Kentucky suburbs. It is a long-awaited project that Mr. Beshear is talking about its closing TV ad.

The Democrats who voted with Mr. Beshear in Kentucky on Tuesday all got the message about Mr. Biden.

Kim Reeder, the Democrat running for state auditor, laughed when asked if she had ever said the words “Joe Biden” out loud, then asked to go off the record when asked what she thought of his performance in his office. Sierra Enlow, the party’s candidate for agriculture commissioner – whose Republican opponent is pledging television advertisements to “stop Biden and save Kentucky” — said she responded by “talking about what voters need to hear and what this office actually does.”

And Pam Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, said she was not talking about Mr. Biden “because no one has asked me about him in the last year.”

Kentucky Republicans recognize that Mr. Beshear is popular and leading even in their polls. Mr. Cameron, a protege of Senator Mitch McConnell, acknowledges in his TV ads that Mr. Beshear is “a nice guy.”

The most popular topics in TV ads aired by Mr Cameron and his Republican allies are crime, opposition to Mr Biden, Mr Trump’s support of Mr Cameron, opposition to LGBTQ rights and jobs, according to AdImpact , a media tracking company. .

Mac Brown, the chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky, said Mr. Beshear’s popularity was a remnant of the billions sent to the state by the Biden administration. Crime is the biggest concern, said Mr. Brown, whose home is in suburban Louisville was vandalized and burned last year.

“If you sit down and look at it, he’s very good at taking credit for what other people do,” Mr. Brown said. “That’s probably the easiest way to say it.”

As with Mr. Biden and other Democrats, the most powerful political weapon for Mr. Beshear is abortion rights. With a Republican supermajority in the Kentucky Legislature, Mr. Beshear can do little to change the state’s near-total ban on the procedure. The building in downtown Louisville that housed one of Kentucky’s last abortion clinics is now on sale.

Mr. Beshear’s campaign is a reversal of decades of red-state Democratic reluctance on abortion politics. While Democrats have avoided the issue in the past or watered down their support for abortion rights, Mr. Beshear has criticized Mr. Cameron for his anti-abortion stance and attacked Kentucky Republicans for passing the abortion ban. He’s broadcasting eye-catching advertisements which shows a woman who says she was raped by her stepfather when she was twelve years old.

Mr Cameron, who has defended the state’s abortion ban in court, now says he would sign legislation to allow some exceptions if he is elected.

“There are no ads saying, ‘Don’t elect the man who is pro-abortion,’” said Trey Grayson, a Republican who served as Kentucky secretary of state in the 2000s.

Last November, voters rejected an effort to include an abortion ban in Kentucky’s constitution. Now, the Beshear campaign’s polling has found that only 12 percent of Kentuckians support the state’s abortion ban. Mr. Beshear said he was trying to change the political language around abortion, away from the old binary between choice and life.

“These terms came from a Roe v. Wade world that no longer exists,” he said in Richmond this week. “In the Dobbs world, we have the most draconian, restrictive law in the country. This race is about whether you think victims of rape and incest should have options, that couples who have non-viable pregnancies should continue with them even if that child is going to die.

Steve Beshear, Mr. Beshear’s father and the state’s former governor, was more succinct about where the abortion debate stood in Kentucky.

“It’s completely changed from a Republican issue to a Democratic issue,” he said.

Just as Mr. Biden’s fate will likely be determined by his performance in the counties surrounding Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, Mr. Beshear has focused on the suburban areas near Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville. In 2019, he won Madison County, a suburb of Lexington that includes Richmond, before Mr. Trump won it by about 27 points in 2020.

Jimmy Cornelison, a Democrat who is the elected coroner of Madison County, said people there appreciated that the state had far fewer deaths from the coronavirus pandemic because Mr. Beshear had implemented aggressive policies to limit public gatherings and requiring masks in indoor spaces. But that doesn’t mean such Kentuckians share Mr. Beshear’s party identification.

“There were a lot of Democrats in this county who are no longer Democrats,” Mr. Cornelison said. “I am the only survivor.”

Voters who came to Mr. Beshear’s campaign rallies this week spoke of his nightly updates on the 2020 coronavirus, his relentless travel schedule and a general satisfaction with how the state is doing. As Mr. Biden talks about restoring “the soul of America,” Mr. Beshear has invited the entire state to join him on “Team Kentucky.”

“People don’t agree with Washington, you know, but they like what’s happening in Kentucky,” said Ralph Hoskins, a Democratic retired school superintendent from Oneida, Kentucky, who drove through the rain to see Mr. Beshear speak under a tent in the church. parking lot of an abandoned supermarket in London, Ky.

Nearby, Jean Marie Durham, a Democrat and retired state employee from East Bernstadt, Ky., showed off a poem she wrote about Mr. Beshear during the early days of the pandemic.

“He cares about our protection from death and despair; He diligently considers our safety and personal care!” she wrote.

Ms. Durham also had ready the response that Mr. Beshear had sent her. He called her “a very talented writer” and wrote that he had the poem on display in his office in Frankfort, the capital.

“He’s one of us,” Ms. Durham said of Mr. Beshear, “even though his father was governor.”