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There’s a tradition of people with famous names getting into national politics by way of what John Adams called “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” also known as the vice presidency of the United States.
Both George HW Bush and Al Gore each served in the second-highest office in America after coming into politics as the son of a famous father, using their family reputation as a stepping-stone.
So if Kamala Harris chooses Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to be her running-mate — and if she defeats Donald Trump to become the 47th President of the United States — Beshear would find himself in good company.
The Bluegrass State’s chief executive is a second-generation politician, what some might call in today’s parlance a “nepo baby,” having grown up the son of Steve Beshear, who served as Kentucky’s governor from 2007 to 2015.
The elder Beshear also held two other statewide offices in the Commonwealth, having served as Attorney General from 1980 to 1983 and as Lieutenant Governor from 1983 to 1987.
His son was just three years old the first time his father won a statewide race, but for most of his life his dad was simply a former office holder who held a job as a high-powered Louisville lawyer.
That changed in 2007 when Beshear was lured back into electoral politics by a corruption scandal-plagued Republican who was seen as a possible target by Democrats.
Steve Beshear emerged from a large primary field to defeat the GOP incumbent, Ernie Fletcher, and was re-elected four years later.
He left office in 2015 as a relatively popular Democrat who was contstrained by term limits. But Andy, his son, was already getting set to follow in his footsteps.
In 2016, one year after his father left the governor’s mansion, Andy Beshear won election as the commonwealth’s attorney general — the first statewide office his father had held — by a margin of roughly 2,000 votes over a Republican opponent.
Meanwhile, the man his dad had ceded executive office to, Republican Matt Bevin, was facing political headwinds after targeting teacher’s pensions and attempting to roll back the state’s Affordable Care Act-driven expansion of Medicare.
The younger Beshear pounced. A hard-fought campaign against Bevin followed, and he ended up winning a close election by less than one percentage point after running up margins in two heavily Democratic counties containing large cities, Louisville and Lexington.
He still faced political headwinds, with the state’s legislature under Republican supermajority control. But the Covid-19 pandemic gave him a platform and made him a national celebrity through the televised briefings he delivered each evening.
And by the time he ran for re-election in 2023, he was still a popular figure who was riding high from the massive influx of federal dollars he was able to distribute, and for his response to a glut of natural disasters that rocked the state during his first term.
Now, with his political future limited by Kentucky’s constitutional term limits, he is reportedly under consideration to be Vice President Harris’ running-mate on the strength of his record as a Democratic governor who twice won statewide election in an extremely Republican-heavy state.
If picked — and if successful — he’d be the fifth person to serve as vice president with ties to Kentucky, following in the footsteps of Adlai Stevenson I, Richard Johnson, John Breckinridge and Alben Barkley.
Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot and ex-Kentucky Senate candidate who remains a prominent Democratic activist in the commonwealth despite losing her campaign against Mitch McConnell in 2020, told The Independent that she believes Beshear could be a strong addition to the Democratic ticket based on the record he’s compiled while leading Kentucky through “unprecedented times.”
She cited his work during Covid, plus his response to other natural disasters — flooding in the eastern section of the commonwealth and tornadoes in the western part — as evidence of his potential value to Harris, calling him “the great consoler.”
“He's really compassionate and responsive. And he's an on-the-ground kind of guy ... That's why people really like him here. He's shown a dedication to that — to governing and being compassionate,” she said.
McGrath also said Beshear’s work with Kentucky’s GOP supermajority legislature shows he can “work with the other side.”
“He's got the experience of an executive. He knows how to talk to voters who don't live on the coasts, who don't always agree with... his party. And I think that is a big benefit to any ticket,” she said.
But another veteran of Kentucky politics, Republican consultant and former George W Bush aide Scott Jennings, said those same traits that McGrath cited wouldn’t count for much under the harsh spotlight of presidential politics.
Jennings told The Independent he was “dumbfounded” by Beshear’s place on Harris’ shortlist compared with other potential picks, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.
“He doesn't come from an important state. His dad wasn't governor of any important state. I'm not really sure what he's supposed to do for her,” he said.
He added that Beshear’s Covid-induced popularity was on par with other governors who served during the worst of the outbreak and noted that not a single incumbent governor — save for scandal-plagued Democrat Steve Sisolak of Nevada — had lost re-election in the wake of the pandemic.
“All these governors were handed billions of federal dollars to run around their states like gameshow hosts and he did it,” he said.
But Jennings also suggested that Beshear’s background as the son of a former governor wouldn’t do him any favors, calling him someone who “sort of slid into this office on his dad's coattails” and then merely performed adequately during times of need.
“We had a tornado. He went around and he hugged people and handed out cases of water. I would expect any governor to do that. I don't think that makes you a brilliant politician,” he said. “He's a figurehead who hugs people when the weather gets bad. That's effectively what he does. And there's no magic in that.”
