Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) has been forced by fate to adopt the same role again and again in his two years in office: giving updates on a tragedy, and mourning people who’d died.
“This is one of the toughest nights in Kentucky’s history,” Beshear said at a morning news conference Saturday, confirming more than 70 deaths across the western part of the state from the most devastating tornadoes in generations.
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“We are here for you,” Beshear said. “We love you. We are praying for you.”
By Sunday, the expectations were even worse, with Beshear tallying a toll of more than 80 people that could rise, he said, to “well over 100.”
“We have entire towns flattened,” Beshear, his voice cracking, said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “It is so hard to describe. There’s not a camera lens big enough to show the path of absolute destruction. People have lost everything. We’re talking in the rescue effort of going ‘door-to-door.’ There aren’t doors. It’s whether or not people are in the rubble .？.？. We’re hoping for miracles.”
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For the 44-year-old second-generation governor who took office just weeks before the commonwealth’s first coronavirus cases hit in 2020, this weekend marked a sudden return to emergency footing. One of just three Democrats leading states won last year by Donald Trump, Beshear’s term has been shaped by crises, conflicts with the Republican legislature in Frankfort and some bipartisan wrangling. He remains popular — particularly for a Democrat in a Trump-favoring state — if down from the levels he enjoyed at the height of the pandemic.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) told reporters on Dec. 11 that the death toll in his state could be between 70-100 losses, after tornadoes hit several states. (Reuters)
“When the pandemic hit, he threw partisan politics out the window,” former governor Steve Beshear wrote when his son announced in October that he would seek reelection in 2023. “He knew that this wasn’t about Democrats and Republicans but was a matter of life and death.”
Beshear entered politics in 2015, leaving a law firm to run for attorney general, another job once held by his father. In a strong Republican year, GOP businessman Matt Bevin captured the governor’s office, and Beshear won his own race by a little more than 2,000 votes.
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Bevin immediately viewed him as a potential challenger, accusing Beshear of filing lawsuits to block a teacher pension overhaul and restore education budget cuts “on behalf of his own political career.” When Beshear joined the 2019 race for governor, he ran on his record of fighting Bevin “tooth and toenail,” as he put it in a Democratic primary debate.
An early favorite for the Democratic nomination, Beshear faced one of his father’s former chiefs of staff, who ran on transitioning the state from coal to solar energy jobs, and the minority leader of the state House, who opposed abortion rights.
Beshear, running down the middle, won the primary with 38 percent of the vote. Bevin, who founded an investment company before turning to politics, attacked him as a lightweight who had never “created a job” or earned one on his own. Campaigning alongside Trump, Bevin linked Beshear to a political family that was far less popular in the commonwealth.
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“You’re the Hunter Biden of Kentucky,” Bevin told Beshear in their final debate before the election, referring to the future president’s son. “Everything you’ve gotten, your father has handed to you.”
Bevin, whose battles had made him deeply unpopular, lost by fewer than 5,200 votes, while the rest of the Republican ticket swept Kentucky. The Republican took nine days to concede, questioning “irregularities” in the vote count, and he denied Beshear access to the governor’s mansion until hours before his swearing-in.
As governor, Beshear has faced a Republican legislature with the power to override his vetoes with a simple majority vote. While he was able to restore voting rights to felons by executive order, fulfilling a campaign pledge, years of battles have loomed over the agenda he ran on, including higher teacher pay.
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Just 86 days into his term, the day that the House passed a budget that slashed his teacher pay increase, Beshear announced the state’s first coronavirus infection and declared a state of emergency.
Like other Democratic governors, he has faced lawsuits and legislation to remove those powers, even as he delivered near-
daily updates on infection rates, fatalities and other fallout from the pandemic. Working with Secretary of State Michael Adams (R), Beshear expanded access to absentee voting and created the commonwealth’s first early-
voting period, changes made permanent by Republicans this year.
Republicans also voted to limit Beshear’s powers, which he used in 2020 to close schools, churches and businesses, allowing phased-in reopenings when infections declined. That drew protests from some conservatives, frustrated that Beshear was not acting like other red-state governors and lifting restrictions as quickly as possible.
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“Right now we’re living under the dictatorship of Beshear, and we’ve got to get out from under him,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told a Bowling Green news station in May 2020. “He’s killing the economy.”
Beshear defended his record while admitting some blunders — such as a news conference on unemployment fraud at which he mistakenly accused a man named Tupac Shakur of making a claim in the name of a deceased rapper.
“He had really high approval ratings when he was taking strong action against the pandemic,” said Joe Gerth, a columnist for the Courier Journal. “But then the Republican legislature stripped him of his power to do much of anything and his numbers came out of the stratosphere.”
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Yet after Beshear’s school mask mandate was repealed by the legislature, most school districts kept mandates in place anyway. When Kentucky obtained coronavirus vaccines, Beshear prioritized them for teachers, and celebrated when more than 90 percent of them got the jab.
“We treated the pandemic as life versus death, while at the same time working with the private sector to keep it humming along,” Beshear told WKBO in an interview aired hours before the tornadoes hit. “Has every decision I’ve made been perfect? No. But I haven’t played politics, unlike some other folks out there.”
The tornadoes and their aftermath have generated a more politically unified response. Paul, who has opposed federal aid for other states after they suffered disasters, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) quickly backed Beshear’s request for it. Charles Booker, a former state legislator running against Paul this year, praised the governor’s “prompt and steadfast” leadership, linking his own campaign to Beshear.
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“As important as it is to have a strong leader like Gov. Beshear,” said Booker, “this crisis further reinforces why it is vital we have leaders in Washington who understand the responsibility of standing for family and will support federal relief in the face of such devastation.”
Residents of Mayfield, Ky., tried to make sense of the devastation on Dec. 11 after a tornado tore through their community, destroying homes and businesses. (Stevie Charles Rees, James Cornsilk/The Washington Post)
As he traveled across the destruction zone over the weekend, Beshear offered ritual reassurances to a stunned populace, speaking repeatedly to President Biden, calling for blood donations at Red Cross locations and announcing a relief fund that will be “solely dedicated to the on-the-ground efforts” and relief work that families will need to rebuild in the aftermath of the tornadoes. The Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund went live Saturday.
He lamented in distressingly personal terms the damage in his father’s hometown, Dawson Springs, one of the locations hit hardest by the tornado and one that he toured Saturday.
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On Sunday, Beshear said that at least 56,000 homes in the state were without power, almost all in western Kentucky. Although 13 warming centers had been open, he said, only six still were — because Kentuckians who were not affected have been taking in those who need shelter, “whether we know them or not.”
“We’re good people that look out for one another, that have just gone through something incredibly difficult,” Beshear said. “But we are resilient, and we will rebuild.”