Outside spending groups will continue investing heavily in the Bluegrass state’s airwaves ahead of this fall’s off-year gubernatorial contest between Democratic governor Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
The pro-Cameron spending group, Kentucky Values, is releasing a new ad linking Beshear to President Joe Biden. The 30-second spot, first shared with National Review, ties Biden to Beshear on the economy, crime, and transgender issues. “Biden has a lot to thank Beshear for,” says a narrator in the ad. Kentucky Values has spent roughly $9 million on ads to date.
But polls show that Beshear still has a comfortable lead ahead of Cameron in the final weeks of the campaign ahead of Election Day on November 7, and that the popular Democratic governor is not viewed with the same suspicion by Republican-leaning voters in Kentucky as Biden. “Despite President Joe Biden’s unpopularity in the Bluegrass State, half of Kentucky voters who disapprove of his job performance approve of Beshear’s,” according to a July polling readout from the survey firm Morning Consult. “And despite Donald Trump’s double-digit 2020 victory there, those who voted for the former president are nearly as likely to approve of Beshear as they are to disapprove.”
The race will test how abortion plays at the ballot box in a deep-red state nearly a year after Kentucky voters narrowly shot down a proposal that would have amended the state constitution to clarify that there is no right to abortion. That effort failed by roughly 4.5 points.
The Democratic Governors Association, the Beshear campaign, and other left-leaning outside-spending groups are relying heavily on abortion messaging in the final weeks. “‘Anencephaly.’ The first time that I heard that term was at our 20-week ultrasound. The doctor told us that that meant our baby would be born without a brain,” a narrator reads in a recent 30-second ad paid for by the DGA-aligned group Defending Bluegrass Freedom. “We had to end the pregnancy. But, if Daniel Cameron had gotten his way, it would have forced us to give birth to our child with no brain.”