Democrat Andy Beshear claimed victory Tuesday night over incumbent Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, an ally of President Donald Trump who said he was not ready to concede the election with only a few thousand votes separating him from reelection.
Beshear, Kentucky’s attorney general, was leading statewide by about 5,000 votes, holding many urban and suburban communities, while Bevin was running strong in many farming counties. The Associated Press said the race was “too close to call.”
Appearing at his victory party shortly after 10 p.m., Beshear vowed to be a “governor for everyone.” He said the election’s outcome should be viewed as a sign that voters are tired of partisan division.
“With all the partisan bickering and nastiness that we are seeing in politics, we have an opportunity to do better right here in Kentucky,” Beshear said. “I ran on kitchen-table issues, and I will govern, focused on those same challenges of good jobs, health care for every Kentuckian, protecting and funding our pensions and always supporting public education.”
But in his election night speech, Bevin said that “there have been more than a few irregularities” in the election, without citing specific examples.
“This is a close, close race; we are not conceding this race by any stretch,” he said.
Republicans won several other statewide races in Kentucky, including the contest for attorney general. Republican Daniel Cameron, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will become Kentucky’s first African-American attorney general, replacing Beshear. Cameron’s victory is a major boost for national Republicans who have struggled to add more diversity to their slate of elected leaders.
The governor’s race ended with President Trump mounting an aggressive effort to stop Beshear from winning the governor’s mansion in a state that the president carried by nearly 30 percentage points just three years earlier. The contest was marred by bitter personality and policy disagreements between the two candidates, including Bevin’s spat with Kentucky teachers over efforts to change their pensions.
In a statement Tuesday evening, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, maintained that Trump’s support helped Republican candidates in Kentucky on election night.
“President Trump’s rally helped five of six Kentucky Republicans win clear statewide victories, including Attorney General-elect Daniel Cameron, who will be the first black A.G. in Kentucky history and the first Republican to hold the office since 1948,” he said. “The President just about dragged Gov. Matt Bevin across the finish line, helping him run stronger than expected in what turned into a very close race at the end. A final outcome remains to be seen.”
Voters also took to the polls Tuesday to decide the governor’s race in Mississippi, where Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood ran against Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves. With 67 percent of precincts reporting, Reeves was leading with 53 percent of the vote while Hood held about 45 percent.
That election largely centered on how the state will pay for a host of needs, including new highways and teachers’ demands for higher pay, as well as Medicaid expansion to roughly 300,000 low-income residents.
The last polls close at 7 p.m. central time in Mississippi.
The gubernatorial races came one year after Democrats made major inroads in state houses, including flipping seven governorships and more than 400 state legislative seats. Many of those gains were in Midwestern or coastal states that formed the backbone of the backlash to Trump in the 2018 midterm elections. But this year, there are only three gubernatorial races, all in states that have been far friendlier to Trump and his conservative agenda.
Three weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, failed to win an outright majority in his state’s bipartisan “jungle” primary, triggering a runoff election on Nov. 16 against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone. Ahead of the election, Trump traveled to Louisiana to campaign against Edwards, a strategy the president repeated in the hours leading up to Tuesday’s elections.
In 2016, Trump carried Mississippi by about 17 points, Louisiana by about 20 points and Kentucky by about 30 points.
As he campaigned in all three states, the contests gave Trump an opportunity to refine his campaign tactics ahead of the 2020 presidential election, especially when it comes to wooing religious conservatives and white working-class voters to the polls. The elections also give Trump a chance to prove his political staying power, even as the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry continues to intensify.
On Monday night, less than 12 hours before the polls opened, Trump appeared at a rally in Lexington, Kentucky, to support Bevin but also made sure the crowd knew his own reputation was on the line.
“If you lose, they will say Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world,” said Trump, pointing at a bank of news cameras. “You can’t let that happen to me, and you can’t let that happen to your incredible state.”
Although Kentucky has been trending Republican for decades, Bevin is only the second Republican governor to be elected in the state in the past 50 years. Bevin, 52, is a wealthy businessman who rose to political prominence after he became a leader of the conservative tea party movement that opposed the policies of President Barack Obama.
(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Tim Craig
{Matzav.com}
