Bevin toned down his language on Medicaid throughout the campaign.
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“This is a great night for conservatives in Kentucky”, said Bevin, standing with his family and running mate Jenean Hampton, who will become Kentucky’s first African-American lieutenant governor. He won a bitter GOP campaign by a mere 83 votes in May over outgoing Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, a year after a sound defeat by Sen. Mitch McConnell thrashed him in the GOP primary.
“The degree to which the national party is out of step with mainstream Kentuckians has created an environment where it’s extraordinarily hard for a Democrat to win statewide”, said state Auditor Adam Edelen, who lost his re-election bid to a little-known Republican state representative. In other words, although Kentucky is a red state, it isn’t as red as you might think.
Voter turnout was just over 30 percent, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The three winning Democratic candidates spent an estimated $5.9 million combined compared with $1 million from the three Republicans.
Many thanks to all who helped and had faith as we yet again took on a race that the consensus decreed done, over, and a waste of time and resources.
In the election races across the country Tuesday, Houston voters rejected a transgender “bathroom bill”, Ohioans torched legal marijuana, and Republicans captured both gubernatorial contest races at stake. Bevin’s election gives Republicans control of the executive branch along with a commanding majority in the state Senate. It’s not clear yet what caused the issues, but we do have a few clues as to why the polls showed a close race when the result was a 9-point victory for Bevin.
In addition the Democrats thought they had a silver bullet in the popular state-run Kynect health-insurance marketplace, implemented under the auspices of Obamacare. A gain of just one seat by Democrats could have flipped control because Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam would have served as the tiebreaker. “Only an idiot would try to undo that – which brings me to gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin”.
This is a more nuanced story than supporters of the ACA hoped to be telling after Kentucky’s election. And if Bevin keeps his promises, he could very well lead Kentucky down the same path Scott Walker put Wisconsin on by taking us full on into right-to-work status, undoing Kynect and gutting a state budget that is already inadequate to its needs. His low-budget campaign reflected the sorry state of the Mississippi Democratic Party, observers said. He has also proudly supported and advocated on behalf of Rowan County, marriage-equity opponent Kim Davis and has promised a hack-and-slash approach to the state budget that will certainly impact everything from education to roads.
But there were other theories. I’m sure Jack Conway is a swell fella, but, like Coakley in Massachusetts and Tom Barrett in Wisconsin, this is the second statewide race he’d lost in five years, and the last one he lost was to Rand Paul. “We have a lot of people still suffering – our economy’s weak, our tax base is weak”.
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Bevin’s election led a night of Republican dominance. His speech echoed his remarks at Kentucky’s Fancy Farm political picnic earlier this year, where he refused to play along with the event’s 100-year tradition of political heckling by not criticizing Conway and instead leading the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Beshear predicted that “the Democratic nominee will make this a major issue and will pound the Republicans into the dust with it”.
