On Tuesday night, Kentucky’s gubernatorial primaries yielded much closer-than-expected battles on both sides, with Republican Gov. Matt Bevin holding off a minor challenger by a desultory margin and state Attorney General Andy Beshear narrowly capturing the Democratic nod over a pair of rivals.
Beshear had taken 38% of the vote with 95% of precincts reporting, edging state House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, who was at 32%, and former state Auditor Adam Edelen, who finished in third with 28%. Beshear began the race as the frontrunner, in part thanks to his famous family name—his father, Steve Beshear, served two terms as governor from 2007 to 2015—and limited polling (including one survey from Edelen) showed him with a wide lead.
But the last poll we saw was conducted a month before the primary, an eternity in politics. Edelen, who was aided by major cash infusions from his wealthy running mate, Gill Holland, and Holland’s family, went sharply negative against Beshear in the final weeks and may have damaged him.
Adkins, meanwhile, avoided the scrum and ran up the score in his home base in rural eastern Kentucky, likely by appealing to more conservative voters (Adkins calls himself “pro-life” while Beshear and Edelen support reproductive rights). In the end, though, while Beshear’s margin was much smaller than those long-ago polls suggested, he still emerged the victor.
As for Bevin, he entered the race as the most unpopular governor in the country and it showed: He beat state Rep. Robert Goforth, who self-funded his campaign with some $750,000 but otherwise attracted little support, by just a 52-39 spread.
While Bevin is the first Republican governor in state history to preside over a Republican-run legislature, he’s spent most of his time in office feuding with lawmakers: Last year, most notably, legislators overrode a Bevin veto of new education funding after a punishing teachers strike engulfed the state. Bevin’s chaotic tenure has left him despised not only by Democrats and independents, but even by many GOP voters, who gave him a very weak 52-34 favorability score in a PPP poll earlier this month.
However, Kentucky is deeply conservative—it remains one of Donald Trump's best states—and that may be all Bevin needs to survive, especially now that he's gotten Trump's seal of approval. Daily Kos Elections currently rates this race Lean Republican, meaning we think that Bevin has the advantage. But we're still five months from Election Day, and the real attacks have yet to fly, so a win for Beshear is still very much a possibility.
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