Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general and a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell, won the Republican nomination for governor of the state on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, against an elite challenge. expensive and expensive by Kelly Craft, a wealthy former ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr Cameron’s win two numbers establishes what is likely to be the most closely watched and fiercely competitive statewide race remaining in 2023. Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat running for re-election, is one of the the most popular governor in the country, and even Republicans believe he will be hard to beat in November.
Tuesday’s results were also a setback for Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida as he nears his expected presidential campaign. On Monday, he was support Ms. Craftabruptly turned the race into a proxy battle between him and former President Donald J. Trump, who backed Cameron in June 2022.
In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mr Cameron said, “Trump’s winning culture is alive and well in Kentucky” – a stab at Mr. DeSantis recent comments criticized the Republican Party’s “losing culture”.
With nearly 80 percent of the votes counted, Ms. Craft, who belongs to one of the largest Republican donor families in the country, trails well behind Mr. Cameron. She also follows a third candidate, Ryan Quarles, Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner.
Republicans have long viewed Mr Cameron as a potential political star who could join the next generation of party leaders. Mr. Cameron has had an illustrious career — he was the first Black elected attorney general in Kentucky and the first Republican elected to the post in 50 years — and his campaign capable of attracting the support of agents and donors outside of Kentucky.
Mr Cameron headed to the general election in his victory speech. “The new religion of the left casts doubt on the greatness of America,” he said. “They embrace a picture of this country and this commonwealth rooted in division, hostility to faith and committed to undermining our education system.”
And he took aim at his November rival: “Andy Beshear is doomed to live in a community where violent crime is high and the labor force participation rate low. He is content to preside over the abandonment of our inner cities and the ruin of our rural communities.”
Part of Mr. Beshear’s power stems from Republican dominance of the state. The party holds a majority in the Legislature, making it difficult for the governor to exercise much power without a veto. That dynamic, however, has allowed Mr. Beshear to avoid contentious confrontations with Republicans over hot-button issues and help him focus on using state resources to help. repair infrastructure and improve the economy.
Mr. Beshear, who contested Tuesday’s primaries, remained largely silent on the Republican battleground, running a miniature digital ad campaign focused on the achievement of expanding voting rights. and presided over the economic expansion of the state.
“I am honored to be your Democratic nominee for governor of Kentucky,” said Mr. Beshear. wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. “Together, we will continue to build on the progress of the past three years — pushing our commonwealth not left or right, but moving forward. Let’s do this.”
And in his victory speech, Mr. Beshear sought to put on a cheery tone and said the Republican candidates presented a stark contrast to him. “They are trying to turn us against each other,” he said, “calling out anyone who disagrees with them, telling you you can scream, even hate your fellow human beings. We are much stronger than that.”
Although Mr. Cameron was elected attorney general of Kentucky in 2019, he has fully hit the national scene with a prime-time speech during the 2020 Republican National Convention.
He immediately became a favorite of Mr. Trump, who endorse his campaign almost a year before the primaries. Mr. Cameron made Trump’s support the focus of his campaign for the state leadership of Kentucky that the former president made by more than 25 percentage points by 2020.
Mr Cameron’s tenure as attorney general has included numerous clashes with the federal government. These include his battle-vaccination requirements for federal contractors and his attempt to stop the Biden administration from allowing the lapse of Title 42, Trump’s Covid-era immigration policy that ended on Thursday. He has also sued Mr. Beshear, including seeking new limits on access to abortion.
These legal disputes became the basis of his cryptic speech.
“When Governor Beshear decided to close the churches, I went to federal court and after nine days the churches were reopened in Kentucky,” Cameron said at a campaign stop in Shepherdsville in September. first, referring to the initial pandemic regulations.
Mr Cameron, a former aide to Mr McConnell, is expected to be nominated because of his ties to the powerful minority leader in the Senate and with Mr Trump. But the race became more intense after Miss Craft, who is married to coal billionaire Joe Craft, began pouring millions of dollars of her own money into the race, inundated with waves of advertising. Mr Cameron did not have the resources to keep up.
The bruised nature of the primaries has some Kentucky Republicans worried about their prospects in the general election.
For nearly two months, Ms. Craft was the only primary candidate to have an advertisement from her or her allies on television. Combined, she and her allies spent more than $7 million on advertising, compared with just $2.6 million for Mr Cameron and his supporters, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking company. fox.
Her campaign attacked Mr Cameron for advocating the closure of a coal plant (the coal plant in question was in West Virginia) and rebuked him for not resisting the Justice Department’s investigation into the matter. with the Louisville Police Department after police officers shoot and kill Breonna Taylor during a failed raid on her apartment in 2020. She also sought to portray Mr Cameron as a Mr McConnell “follower”, a rare public criticism of a man who had Kentucky political guide for nearly 40 years.
Mr Cameron received late support from an allied political action committee, Bluegrass Freedom Action, which receives most of its funding from the Concord Foundation, part of a network of influential conservative groups led by Activist Leonard A. Leo manages. The group spent $2.1 million in the final six weeks of the primaries, supporting Mr Cameron and attacking Ms Craft.
Other Elections
In Florida
Donna Deegan, a Democrat, won the mayoral race in Jacksonville, Fla., defeating Daniel Davis, a Republican backed by Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Davis admit race on Tuesday night.
Deegan will be the first woman to lead her city as mayor. “Tonight we made history,” she said in victory speech. “It’s a whole new day for Jacksonville, Florida.”
Neil Vigdor contribution report.
