Beshear won this county by 0.3 points in 2019. How are voters there feeling now?

Four months ago, GOP gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron rallied dozens of Richmond Republicans at his very first campaign event since winning the Republican primary in landslide fashion.

Why was his first event in Madison County?

Cameron, the state’s attorney general and 37-year-old rising star within the party, told the crowd gathered at a Richmond historic estate that the result in Madison County would play an especially pivotal role in deciding the outcome of his race against incumbent Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear.

“Madison County is going to play an outsize role in this conversation, because in ‘19 we didn’t win Madison County. In 2023, we have to. That conversation starts today; it starts with your hard work,” Cameron said.

The county swung for Beshear over former GOP governor Matt Bevin by 0.3 points.

Along with Scott County, a fellow ‘collar county’ around Fayette to the north, Madison County tracked the closest with the statewide result. Even more, Madison County election results for the 2019 attorney general’s race, the 2020 presidential race, the 2022 U.S. Senate race and the 2022 vote against the anti-abortion rights constitutional amendment all came within one percentage point of the statewide result.

If there is a political bellwether in this governor’s race, Madison County fits the bill as well as any county in the commonwealth.

Madison County’s roughly 95,000 residents average almost the same income as the median Kentuckian at $55,000. And while it is more white and more educated – it’s home to two post-secondary schools in Eastern Kentucky University and Berea College – than the rest of Kentucky, those differences tend to balance each other out in terms of partisan preferences.

But by many measures, Madison County seems solidly Republican.

Like most of Kentucky’s 120 counties, it used to be controlled by Democrats, but that balance of power changed slowly at the turn of the century and then nearly all at once in the Donald Trump era.

Since Trump’s first presidential run in 2016, the county has voted Republican for president by at least 27 percentage points and Republican for the U.S. Senate by at least 22 points.

By 2019, its number of registered Republicans outmatched registered Democrats. As of 2023, every county partisan official with the exception of one is a Republican.

And yet, Beshear beat a Republican opponent there in 2019, and local political observers predict a close matchup again.

Partisanship and the ‘very personal’

You could say that Madison County Coroner Jimmy Cornelison is a dying breed.

Ever since Sheriff Mike Coyle switched parties and became a Republican shortly after winning re-election in 2022, Cornelison has been the only Democrat to hold partisan office in Madison County.

A former deputy coroner, Cornelison has faced no competition and received high vote totals in six election cycles since beating his boss in 1998. He attributes that to the personal nature of his role.

“Life and death are very personal. It’s so personal. It’s ‘that’s my baby laying there, that’s my husband laying there,’” Cornelison said. So much so, that he said it probably shouldn’t be a partisan office.

Considerate actions, such as driving to church in a separate vehicle from his wife in case he gets called out, leaving home in the middle of the night to get a necklace at the request of a loved one of the recently deceased, counseling people in their immediate grief – these are actions more important to professional and political success in Madison County than any party-line maneuvering, Cornelison said.

In that way, he sees some similarities between his own work and Beshear, who’s been dubbed “the consoler in chief” by some. Could that parlay into an electoral success for the incumbent governor in Cornelison’s backyard?

“Look what this man has been through. He’s been through COVID, floods, school shootings, tornadoes and hail storms,” Cornelison said. “On COVID, he bellied up to the bar as far as I’m concerned. I know people that got mad over it, but here’s my answer to that: I did several COVID deaths, but how many would I have done (with fewer precautions)?”

For many voters, though, national politics still rule.

Brandon Rutherford, a Republican who chairs the Madison County School Board, said Madison County voters’ alignment with national Republicans is a strong force, with registration numbers tipping more in the GOP’s favor each month. But the decisive factor in favor of Cameron, he predicts, will be overwhelming wins by GOP candidates running down the ballot, buoyed by two neighboring Garrard County nominees.

“I think Cameron will win (Madison County), but it’s going to be close. And I really do believe it’s gonna be because of the straight party vote,” Rutherford said.

But other Republicans aren’t as sure straight party ticket voting will prevail.

Matt Howell, an Eastern Kentucky University government professor who is the sponsor of EKU’s College Republicans chapter, said he’s aware of some concern among the local GOP that Beshear’s popularity will cross party lines at the ballot box.

“It’s still a pretty Republican-leaning, ‘Trumpy’ area. That said, I have heard rumblings among Republicans in the whole area that there are a lot of Republicans who, and I hear this from people who go door knocking, that there are a lot of people who feel like ‘Beshear hasn’t done so bad of a job, so why would we vote him out?

“This is anecdotal, but it does kind of indicate that the governor’s election is going to be close,” Howell said.

The drug epidemic, homelessness and economic development were most frequently cited by Madison County residents as pressing local issues, though it’s unclear if any of these will play a role in how voters approach the gubernatorial race.

The Bluegrass Army Depot, which employs more than 1,400 people per EKU-based public radio station WEKU, is another topic of discussion. With its decommissioning process coming to a close, local officials are concerned about finding jobs for those workers and replacing lost local occupational tax revenue.

According to Martina Jackson, a Democrat who ran for state House in 2022, the prospect of new development in the county – which is the eighth-fastest growing of Kentucky’s 120 – can be a “double-edged sword.”

“Well, people like the small town feel here, but I think the economic opportunities are really important. We’re starting to get noticed for various reasons, including for having a very employable demographic here,” Jackson said.

Madison County also has the longest stretch of I-75 in the state, and many in the community are hopeful that more employers can be attracted along the busy highway. But the interstate also makes the county a hot spot for drug activity, according to Cornelison.

The coroner said that his office counted 69 overdose deaths in the county last year and has logged 55 so far in 2023.

The ‘collar counties’

Chris Kirkwood, a doctoral candidate at the University of Kentucky who specializes in elections analysis, figures Beshear is likely to lose support in rural counties across Kentucky due to national trends in voting behavior.

With the traditional Democratic centers of Fayette and Jefferson counties likely sticking with Beshear, Kirkwood said he thinks the election will be won or lost in the “collar” counties around Lexington – Madison, Clark, Bourbon, Woodford, Jessamine and Scott.

Collectively, that group of counties has almost as much population as Fayette County – a U.S. Census-estimated 293,000 people compared to Fayette’s 320,000.

Bevin won the region by nearly 2.1 percentage points in 2019. Kirkwood predicted that Beshear would need to win it by as much or more to “scrape by” in 2023.

“I’m not confident the numbers are going to hold up for him in a lot of the state. I think he’s not going to do as poorly in some rural parts because of the disaster relief and highway expansion, but he is definitely going to lose some ground in some places. I think he’s going to need to win the collar counties outright,” Kirkwood said.

Sights and studies

Newby Country Store is a symbol in rural Madison County.

Touting itself as “one of the only true country stores left in Kentucky,” the sandwich and specialty grocery stop sees not only regular farmers and curious tourists – it also serves as a community hub and tutoring center through owner Ashlie Hatton’s nonprofit.

It’s in the heart of a northwest county precinct that supported Bevin over Beshear by 27 percentage points, 62 to 35.

However, it’s been “quiet” when it comes to talk of the governor’s race so far, according to Hatton.

About 75% of the regulars, who will stop in and shoot the breeze for a prolonged time, leaned Republican. The conversation at the store is often about matters other than politics, though. That’s a possible corollary of the election featuring less vitriol than 2019 or the impending 2024 presidential election.

“For us, The people that talk the most are Republican. So it’s kind of like we live in a vacuum, right? If the store was in the middle of downtown Richmond, it’d probably be the other way around.”

It is, politically speaking, the other way around at Dreaming Creek Brewery in downtown Richmond. Beshear has appeared several times.

Charley Hamilton, the proprietor there who’s a lifelong Richmonder, said that downtown where he lives and works is a generally more left-leaning place.

“It’s always a huge crowd, and it’s pretty energetic,” he said. “I think a lot of people around here think he did well during the pandemic in keeping things going and as safe as possible.”

The brewery’s precinct voted for Beshear in 2019, 66 to 31.

Morgan Eaves is a Democratic attorney and consultant who ran for state representative in Madison County in 2018 and worked under Beshear at the start of his administration. The Beshear team’s connection with Madison County via campaign and official events is a game-changer, he said.

“Andy, (Lt. Gov.) Jacqueline Coleman and (Beshear senior adviser) Rocky Adkins have been omnipresent there to shake hands and kiss babies – all that old-school political (stuff). In rural communities, that makes a huge difference. People want to know who they’re voting for and be asked for their vote,” Eaves said.

But what about the two campuses in Madison County?

Across the United States, college towns are trending more and more left as Democrats continue to make gains with college-educated voters – 33.4% of those living in Madison County have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 25.7% statewide – and Republicans grow more skeptical of higher education institutions.

Berea College senior Garrett Clark is a registered Republican from Bourbon County who embodies that story. Walking to class last week, he told the Herald-Leader he’s not certain who he’ll support for governor – this election would be his first – but he knows and likes Beshear.

“As far as his policies and stuff, I’d be lying if I said I was super into all of it, I just like that I see him in communities and he actually seems to be doing stuff that’s helping people,” Clark said. “It doesn’t seem like he’s doing it as a gimmick like a lot of politicians do.”

Howell, the EKU College Republicans sponsor, said that he’s not sensed much excitement on campus for this gubernatorial race compared to the last one or 2024’s presidential race.

“One of my projects when I get back from midterms is to be like, ‘Hey, guys, it’s October, there’s an election a month away. Like, do you need me to contact people, to organize door knocking or bring a guest speaker?’ There has been no concerted effort that I have seen to get the students involved from any direction, either from the students or from the state party,” Howell said.