While GOP Rep. James Comer said earlier this month that he was only interested in running for governor of Kentucky this year if incumbent Matt Bevin retired, he told the Associated Press on Thursday that he was reconsidering his plan not to challenge Bevin in a GOP primary. Comer said that Bevin, who has been unpopular for much of his tenure, is in “worse shape than I realized.”
Bevin is already facing state Rep. Robert Goforth in the primary, but Comer would almost certainly be a far-stronger opponent. Indeed, Comer and Bevin faced off in 2015, a contest Bevin won by all of 83 votes. There’s little love lost between the two, and Comer said earlier this month that they haven’t spoken since then.
On Thursday, the same day that Comer told the AP he was considering a primary rematch with Bevin, the congressman also posted a strange tweet where he said, “Lots of talk about who would be a good Governor...I think Republicans should also consider Ambassador Kelly Craft!" This was the first we’d heard about the idea that Craft, a prolific Kentucky GOP donor who is now Trump’s ambassador to Canada, might run for governor, and we wondered why Comer tweeted this out. Now that Comer is also talking openly about running himself, we’re even less sure what’s going on.
Things got even more complicated a few days later when Insider Louisville reported that Bevin recently spoke to Craft about becoming his running mate. There’s still no word about how interested Craft is in being Bevin’s lieutenant governor, in challenging Bevin, or in doing nothing other than finding an Ottawa Tim Hortons and buying herself a Double-Double. Bevin reportedly is also looking at other potential running mates, and we don’t know how high Craft is on the list.
Bevin still has not filed to run again, though he once again insisted last week that he would. The filing deadline is Jan. 29, and we could see candidates enter the race as late as that day; in 2015, Bevin himself only announced he was running on the last possible day to do so.