Kentucky governor race: Here are the keys to victory for Andy Beshear and Daniel Cameron

Four years ago, 5,136 votes put Andy Beshear in the governor’s office over Matt Bevin.

Now, with Election Day less than a week away, you can bet Beshear and opponent Daniel Cameron are both well aware of the difference one vote can make.

Their supporters are, too. It’s why Maggie Cassaro spent a rainy Sunday last weekend knocking on doors in Louisville to rally voters behind four more years of Beshear. The Highlands is a safe bet to go blue on Nov. 7, but she doesn't want to take any chances.

"Even though I have no doubt in my mind — because of his last four years, I have no doubt that he's going to win the election next Tuesday — I just wanted to come out so that maybe I can help one other person say, 'Yeah, I do need to change my vote,'" the Louisville artist said.

You know the candidates by now. They’ve both played high-profile roles in Kentucky politics for years.

Beshear is the incumbent Democrat whose profile rose locally and nationally as he led the state in its COVID-19 response and through the aftermath of several tragedies and natural disasters — or, in his opponent’s eyes, a governor who “will tell you anything on television” before acting against Kentucky's best interests.

Cameron is his Republican challenger, the fast-rising protégé of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and the commonwealth’s first Black gubernatorial nominee by a major party who’s spent the past four years as Kentucky’s attorney general — or, in Beshear's estimation, “the most partisan candidate we have seen in a long time.”

Bevin's unpopularity among voters of both parties was a key in Beshear's 2019 win. But Cameron is a different opponent, and through the pandemic and four eventful years under Beshear's leadership, Kentucky has changed.

As voters head to the polls Tuesday, several factors could decide the governor's race.

Swing counties and the 'golden triangle'

The longtime home of twice-serving Gov. Happy Chandler, Woodford County was once a stronghold for the state's Democratic party. Dan Fister, the Republican elected three years ago to represent the region in Kentucky's House of Representatives, will tell you as much.

But that hasn't been the case lately.

Bevin narrowly won it in 2015 over Jack Conway, a Democrat well known across Kentucky. Former President Donald Trump took the county handily in 2016 and again in 2020. And Fister won his seat in 2020, defeating Democrat Lamar Allen by about 1,000 votes after Democrat Joe Graviss left the position for an unsuccessful state Senate run.

Beshear, though, kept the district blue during his run for governor in 2019. And Fister said the Lexington-area county, home to Versailles and the famed Kentucky Castle, could go either way in 2023.

"It's a Republican county now, but we've got a pretty good mix," he said in October alongside Cameron supporters who had rallied in Lexington ahead of a gubernatorial debate. "It depends on who's going to show up on Election Day."

Beshear's success four years ago in Woodford County shows what Cameron is up against — a popular Democrat who can win counties in a deep-red state.

He beat Bevin in 2019 by dominating in Louisville and Lexington, two cities that had underperformed for Democrats in 2015, and then pulling in above-average vote totals in counties surrounding the state's largest cities, as well as in metro areas like Bowling Green and Northern Kentucky, where voters south of Cincinnati have traditionally gone red on Election Day.

Republican votership in Kentucky has grown since then, with the party passing Democrats in total registration in 2022. For Beshear to win again, both campaigns know it's a strategy he'll have to repeat — Cameron hit Northern Kentucky, Louisville and Bowling Green on a string of campaign stops with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in late October, with more on his schedule, and Beshear planned to visit Lexington, Newport, Louisville and Bowling Green in the weekend before Election Day.

Northern Kentucky was a key in 2019. Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties have more than 332,000 registered voters, and that region's shift toward Beshear made a difference in an election decided by less than 1 percentage point.

Those three counties are the northernmost point of the "golden triangle," a region that includes most of Kentucky's population and major businesses with borders that extend to Louisville and Lexington.

Democrats have made gains among voters in that triangle in recent years, and Stephen Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky who's followed elections in the state for decades, said they'll have to show up in November for Beshear to win.

"Anywhere you have educated professionals, those folks have been shifting leftward. The question is, where are they most numerous?" he said recently. "Oldham County, the wealthiest county in the state, we're talking rich suburb by Kentucky standards — that used to be one of the hearts of the GOP vote. It's been moving toward the Democrats. You've got counties like Scott County (near Lexington) doing the same thing."

Related: Daniel Cameron looks to Louisville's South End as possible key to election

The rise of the Independents

Republicans aren't Kentucky's only growing voting bloc.

Independents have grown lately at a rate faster than either of the two major party affiliations, Secretary of State Michael Adams noted earlier this year, making up 4.2% of all voters in October after sitting at 3% five years ago. In all, just over 10% of Kentucky voters are not registered Democrats or Republicans, with more than 354,000 in the state.

"In most elections, those Independents tilt toward the Republicans, but they do not think of themselves as being a Republican. They think of themselves as wishing they had more choices," Voss said. "So, when you get a Democrat like Beshear, who is willing to talk the right way and willing to soften in the worst edges of the National Democratic Party, Kentucky's Independent voters are perfectly willing to consider a donkey instead of an elephant."

How that faction of voters shows up Tuesday — and who they support — could be a deciding factor. And while Cameron was pulled to the right at times during a crowded Republican primary, both candidates have worked to court moderate support as Election Day approaches.

At WKYT's gubernatorial debate on Oct. 24, the last of five debates between the two candidates, Beshear pushed for voters to stop viewing the election as "Team Red or Team Blue" while continuing to tie Cameron to private school vouchers, which the candidate said he'd support at a GOP event in the spring.

Cameron, meanwhile, hammered the governor when he didn't specify at what point in a pregnancy he believes abortions should be banned and has repeatedly branded the election as "crazy versus normal" in the final weeks of the campaign, pitching himself as the moderate candidate and Beshear as a leader who shut down schools and who follows the lead of President Joe Biden, who lost to Trump in 2020 by more than 554,000 Kentucky votes.

Supporters on both sides believe their candidate has a case.

Speaking before she knocked on doors for Beshear, Cassaro said "whether you're a Democrat or Republican, what this governor has done for the state has been monumental for every citizen."

"It doesn't matter what their beliefs are. He has done everything to move us forward — economically, socially and politically," she said. "He says it's not Republican or Democrat. It's for the people of the commonwealth."

Beshear's compassionate response to the tornado outbreak that hit Western Kentucky in 2021 and the floods that devastated Eastern Kentucky in the summer of 2022 won him praise on both sides of the aisle. In a recent ad, even Cameron acknowledged Beshear "is a nice enough guy" before arguing he's soft on crime and afraid to oppose Biden, juxtaposing those comments with a photo of Cameron smiling alongside Trump.

After a Cameron campaign event in Louisville two weeks ago with Sen. Paul, attorney Bob Waters said the candidate's argument about crime in particular has resonated with voters from both parties who he's spoken to in Spencer County, where he lives.

"The crime problems are largely in Jefferson, but it's elsewhere in the state as well, and it affects all of us," he said. "Jefferson County is the economic engine of the state, and when Jefferson is hurting it hurts the whole state — and I think people know that all over the state."

State Rep. Fister believes Cameron has one more factor working in his favor — Republicans, Democrats, Independents and voters of all affiliations will choose between just two candidates this year.

In 2019, Libertarian candidate John Hicks was on the ballot and pulled in more than 28,000 votes, good for almost 2% of the total electorate, and Fister said many of those voters were Republicans seeking an alternative to Bevin who "carried Beshear across the line."

The turnout factor

Both candidates will tell you they'd like to see high turnout on Election Day, after a primary that drew less than 15% of registered voters.

But with shifting voting demographics in Kentucky, who stands to benefit most isn't an easy answer.

With growing ranks of Republican voters, the GOP would like to see its members come out in force to support its candidates. And Voss believes registration numbers aren't the only reason a good turnout would benefit the party.

A higher number of college-educated voters lean blue, Voss said, and that demographic is more likely to vote every year regardless of who's on the ballot. A high-turnout election, meanwhile, would bring out more voters who fall in the "sometimes voting category," he said, many of whom lean Republican.

And while Beshear's base of voters is enthusiastic and vocal, Cameron has "a whole lot of potential support among a very large Republican-leaning Kentucky electorate."

"If we get a low-turnout election, I expect Beshear's engaged based to be overrepresented. If, for whatever reason, lots of voters decide to do their duty and show up on Election Day, a lot of those voters will go Republican as they have in the past," he said. "Cameron should be crossing his fingers for good weather on Election Day."

Still, Trump, a popular figure in the state whose endorsement helped Cameron win the primary, won't be on the ballot to energize party voters, and Beshear has had four years to make his case to remain in office, with Morning Consult polling ranking him as the most popular Democrat governor in the U.S. among Republican voters.

"Turnout is going to be important, and Republicans do have the wind at their back as far as they've actually now outregistered Democrats," University of Louisville political science professor Dewey Clayton said in September. "... (But) when you're an incumbent and you've done a pretty good job, oftentimes that works in your favor."

This race is about more than numbers, though. Beshear has won over GOP voters before, and Cassaro said she believes his leadership and "kindness" in the aftermath of the 2021 tornadoes, 2022 flooding and 2023 mass shooting at downtown Louisville's Old National Bank headquarters won him fans from Republicans as much as Democrats.

But despite her confidence, there's a reason she took time on a Sunday to campaign in the rain. As Clayton said, nothing is a given on Election Day.

"They both have their favorables and unfavorables," he said. "... It will be an interesting race, and it's almost upon us now. We'll just have to sort of wait and see."

Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 2023 KY Governor election keys to win for Andy Beshear, Daniel Cameron