Andy Beshear

In November 2013, Beshear announced his candidacy in the 2015 election for Attorney General of Kentucky, to succeed Democrat Jack Conway. Conway could not run for reelection, due to term limits.[15][16]

Beshear defeated Republican Whitney Westerfield by a margin of 0.2 percent, getting 50.1% of the vote to Westerfield's 49.9%.[17][18] The margin was approximately 2,000 votes.[19]

Beshear speaks at a teacher's rally at the Kentucky state capitol

Beshear sued governor Matt Bevin several times over what he argued was the governor's abuse of executive powers, during Beshear's tenure as attorney general and while he was campaigning against Bevin for governor.[20] Beshear won some cases and lost others.[20] In April 2016, Beshear sued Bevin over his mid-cycle budget cuts to the state university system.[21] The Kentucky Supreme Court issued a 5–2 ruling agreeing with Beshear that Bevin did not have the authority to make mid-cycle budget cuts without the approval of the Kentucky General Assembly.[22] Also in 2016, the Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously sided with Bevin, when Beshear sued him arguing unsuccessfully that Bevin didn't have the authority to overhaul the University of Louisville's board of trustees.[23] In 2017, the Kentucky Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit brought against him by Beshear, holding that Bevin has the power to temporarily reshape boards while the legislature isn't in session; Bevin called Beshear's lawsuit a "shameful waste of taxpayer resources."[24] In April 2018, Beshear successfully sued Bevin, this time for signing Senate Bill 151, a controversial plan to reform teacher pensions, with the Kentucky Supreme Court ruling the bill unconstitutional.[25][26][27] Bevin said Beshear: "never sues on behalf of the people of Kentucky. He does it on behalf of his own political career ..."[28]

Through October 2019, Beshear filed nine lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies for their alleged involvement in fueling Kentucky's opioid epidemic.[29][30]

Beshear served just one term as attorney general, foregoing a run for a second term in 2019 to instead run successfully for Governor against Bevin. He resigned from the Attorney General's office on December 10, 2019, to be sworn in as the Governor of Kentucky. He was succeeded by Republican Daniel Cameron on December 17.[31]

On July 9, 2018, Beshear declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Kentucky in the 2019 election.[32] His running mate was Jacqueline Coleman, a nonprofit president, assistant principal, and former state house candidate.[33] Beshear said he would make public education a priority.[26] In May 2019, he won the Democratic nomination with 37.9% of the vote in a three-way contest, in which due to his father he had the greatest name recognition.[34][35][36]

On November 5, 2019, Beshear faced off in the general election against incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin, the least popular governor in the United States, with only a 33% approval rating in April 2019.[37][38][39]

Beshear won by 0.37 percentage points, getting 49.20% of the vote to Bevin's 48.83%.[40] It was the closest Kentucky gubernatorial election ever by percentage, and the closest race of the 2019 gubernatorial election cycle in the United States.[41]

Days later, Bevin had not yet conceded the race, claiming large-scale voting "irregularities" but not offering evidence, while Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes' office nevertheless declared Beshear the winner.[40][42] On November 14, 2019, Bevin conceded the election after a recanvass was performed at his request that resulted in just a single change, an additional vote for a write-in candidate.[43]

Ultimately, Beshear defeated Bevin largely by receiving over 65 percent of the vote in the state's two most populous counties of Jefferson and Fayette, respectively home to Louisville and Lexington. He also narrowly carried the normally heavily Republican suburban counties of Campbell and Kenton in Northern Kentucky as well as several rural counties in Eastern Kentucky that traditionally had voted Democratic but had shifted to generally Republican support in recent elections.

Beshear meets with U.S. Army Cadet Command leadership at Fort Knox

Beshear was inaugurated as governor on December 10, 2019.[44] In his inaugural address that day, Beshear called on Republicans, who had a supermajority in both houses of the Kentucky General Assembly, to reach across the aisle and solve Kentucky's issues in a bipartisan way.[45]

Upon taking office, Beshear replaced all 11 members of the Kentucky Board of Education before the end of their two-year terms. The firing of the board members fulfilled a campaign pledge, and was an unprecedented use of the governor's power to reorganize state boards while the legislature was not in session. Beshear's critics suggested that the appointments undermined the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, which sought to insulate the board from political influence; the Board had increasingly been the focus of political battles in the years leading up to the 2019 removals.[46]

On December 12, 2019, Beshear signed an executive order restoring voting rights to 180,315 Kentuckians, who he said were disproportionately African-American, who had been convicted of non-violent felonies.[47][48][49][50]

Beshear ordered Kentucky state troopers to record the license plate numbers of church-goers who violated the state's COVID-19 stay-at-home order to attend in-person Easter Sunday church services in April 2020.[51][52] The order led to contentious debate.[53]

In June 2020, Beshear promised to provide free health care to all African-American residents of Kentucky who need it, in an attempt he said to resolve health care inequities which came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic.[54][55][56]

On November 18, 2020, as the state's number of COVID-19 cases continued to grow, Beshear ordered Kentucky's public and private schools to halt in-person learning beginning on November 23, with in-person classes to resume in January 2021. This marked the first time Beshear ordered, rather than recommended, schools to cease in-person instruction.[57][58][59] Danville Christian Academy, joined by Attorney General Daniel Cameron, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky against Beshear's order, claiming that it violated the First Amendment by prohibiting religious organizations to educate children in accordance with their faith.[60] A group of Republican U.S. Senators supported the challenge.[58] Their challenge was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the order.[58][61]

In March 2021, Beshear vetoed all or part of 27 bills that had been passed by the Kentucky legislature. The majority Republican legislature overrode his vetoes.[62]

In December 2021, Beshear led the emergency response to a devastating tornado outbreak in western Kentucky, which devastated the town of Mayfield and killed more than 70 people, the deadliest in the state's history.[63]

Beshear supports legal access to abortion, and supports Roe v. Wade.[65] He said as to abortion that "women should be able make their own reproductive healthcare decisions," including abortion. One month after he took office as governor, his administration gave Planned Parenthood permission to provide abortions at its clinic in Louisville, making it the second facility in Kentucky to offer abortions.[66] As governor, in April 2020 he vetoed a bill, widely described as anti-abortion, that would have allowed the Republican anti-abortion Attorney General to suspend abortions during the pandemic and to exercise more power over regulating clinics that offer abortions.[67][68] He was endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, and applauded by Planned Parenthood.[67][69]

In 2021, however, he allowed a bill called a "born-alive bill", considered by abortion rights advocates to be a measure intended to "shame and ostracize patients", to become a law without his signature.[70] Such bills are criticized as unnecessary and politically motivated because current laws and medical ethics already require all infants to receive appropriate medical care.[70]

On March 25, 2020, Beshear declared a state of emergency over the COVID-19 pandemic.[71] Beshear encouraged business owners to require customers to wear face coverings while indoors.[72][73] He also banned "mass gatherings" including protests but not normal gatherings at shopping malls and libraries; constitutional law professor Floyd Abrams and lawyer John Langford opined that Beshear's order was inappropriate as it violated the special protected status under the First Amendment of the US Constitution of public protests.[74]

In August 2020, Beshear signed an executive order releasing inmates from prisons and jails in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus. A report by the Kentucky Department of information and Technology Services Research and Statistics found that one year later over 48% of the 1,704 inmates released had committed another crime; and one third of that total committed a new felony.[75]

Beshear was criticized for not calling the Kentucky General Assembly into a special session (a power only the Governor has) in order to work with state representatives to better address the needs of their constituents during the COVID-19 pandemic.[76] In November 2020, the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Beshear's emergency coronavirus executive orders.[77] In late November 2020, Beshear imposed new restrictions to further slow the spread of COVID-19, including closing all indoor service for restaurants and bars, restricting in-person learning for school, limited occupancy for gyms, and limiting social gatherings.[78] House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers criticized Beshear for failing to ask the legislature for input before making his decisions.[79]

Beshear's targeted closures met with criticism after it was discovered that state and local authorities were unable to establish contact tracing as it relates to certain types of businesses listed in his restrictions.[80] On June 11, 2021—one day after the Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral argument on the emergency powers issue—Beshear lifted most of Kentucky's COVID-19 restrictions.[81][82][83][84][85] In August 2021, amid an upsurge in cases driven by the Delta variant, Beshear mandated that face masks be worn in public schools.[86]

On August 19, 2021, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman issued a temporary restraining order blocking the school mask mandate.[87] Two days later, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled against Beshear's challenge of several newly enacted Kentucky laws which, among other things, curb his powers—in that they limit the governor's authority to issue executive orders in times of emergency to 30 days, unless extended by state legislators. The state supreme court dissolved an injunction against the law issued by a Kentucky trial court at the request of Beshear. The Supreme Court's opinion, authored by Justice Lawrence VanMeter, addressed separation-of-powers as between the Governor of Kentucky and the Kentucky General Assembly. The Kentucky Supreme Court found that the challenged laws were valid exercises of the General Assembly's legislative powers, although two justices wrote in a concurring opinion that the 30-day "kill switch" enacted by the legislature should be scrunitzied on remand to the lower courts.[88][89] On August 23, 2021, following his defeat in the Kentucky Supreme Court, Beshear rescinded his executive order requiring masks in Kentucky schools.[90]

Beshear signed an executive order as governor completely restoring the voting rights, and right to hold public office, of 180,315 Kentuckians who had been convicted of non-violent felonies.[49][91][92][48] He has restored rights to more felons than any other governor in American history.[48]

In 2020, Beshear signed an executive order releasing 1,704 inmates from prisons and jails in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus (see COVID-19, below).[75]

In 2020, Kentucky's violent crime rate was its highest since 2008, aggravated assaults were the highest since 2000, and homicides were the highest since 1995.[93] In March 2021, Beshear signed a law that allows judges to decide whether or not to transfer minors age 14 and older to adult court if they are charged with a crime involving a firearm, whereas previously judges were required to send juveniles to adult court to be prosecuted for a felony if a firearm was involved.[94] Supporters of the new law said the old law led to over-prosecution of Black minors, inasmuch as 53% of juveniles charged as adults in Kentucky are Black, while just 8% of the Kentucky's population is Black.[94]

Also in March 2021, after the Kentucky legislature passed a bill to make it a crime to cause $500 or more damage to a rental property, Beshear vetoed the bill.[95] The Kentucky House (74-18) and Senate (28-8) voted to override his veto.[95]

Beshear said that a significant driver of incarceration in Kentucky is the drug epidemic, and opined that Kentucky "must reduce the overall size of our incarcerated population.... We don’t have more criminals. We just put more people in our prisons and jails."[96]

Beshear is of the view that possession of marijuana should never result in incarceration.[97] He would also like to see medical marijuana legalized.[98][99]

Beshear announces construction of a new paper mill in Henderson

Beshear pledged in 2019 to bring more advanced manufacturing jobs and health care jobs to Kentucky, to offset job losses due to the decline of coal.[100]

Beshear opposes the Kentucky right-to-work law.[101][45]

After the Kentucky legislature voted to allow Kentucky distilleries and breweries to qualify for a sales tax break on new equipment, Beshear vetoed the provision. In April 2020, the Kentucky legislature overrode Beshear's veto.[102]

In June 2021, Beshear signed an executive order to allow name, image, and likeness compensation to be received by college athletes. It made Kentucky the first state to do so via executive order, though six other states had done so through their legislatures.[103][104]

Beshear in 2019 pledged to include a $2,000 pay raise for all teachers in Kentucky in his budgets (at what he estimated would be a cost of $84 million). Republican House Majority Floor Leader John Carney rejected the proposal.[105][65][106] Beshear has proposed such a pay raise in his budgets, but the Kentucky Legislature has not included such raises in the budgets it passed.[45][107]

Beshear is opposed to all charter schools in Kentucky, saying "schools run by corporations are not public schools." He says that funding them would violate the state constitution.

Beshear acknowledges that climate change is real and caused by humans. In 2019 he said he wanted to create more clean energy jobs to employ those who lose their jobs in the coal industry and to expand clean coal technology in Kentucky.[108]

Beshear supports legalizing casino gambling, sports betting, fantasy sports betting, and online poker betting in Kentucky.[109][110]

Beshear proclaimed March 2020 as Responsible Gambling Awareness Month in Kentucky.[111]

Beshear supports legal same-sex marriage. He also supports nondiscrimination laws that include gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.[112] He was the first sitting Governor of Kentucky to attend an LGBTQ-rights rally, and posed for a picture with drag queens.[113][114] He supported a ban on the pseudoscientific and medically-rejected practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth[115] which attempts to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity to heterosexual.[116][117]

Beshear said he would not support an assault weapons ban. But he said he would support a red flag law authorizing courts to allow police to temporarily confiscate firearms from people deemed by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others.[109]

Beshear supports Kentucky's Medicaid expansion, which provides affordable health care to over 500,000 Kentuckians, including all people with pre-existing conditions. Beshear criticized Bevin for trying to roll back the state's Medicaid expansion (which ultimately failed). As Attorney General and Governor, Beshear expressed support for the Affordable Care Act and criticized efforts to strike the law down in the courts.[108] On October 5, 2020, Beshear announced the relaunch and expansion of kynect, the state health insurance marketplace that was started in 2013 during Steve Beshear's term as governor and dismantled by Bevin in 2017.[118]

In December 2019, Beshear told President Donald Trump's administration that he planned to have Kentucky continue to accept refugees under the U.S. immigration program.[119] Trump had told state governments that they had the power to opt out of the US refugee resettlement program.[119]

Beshear supports a $2.5 billion project to build a companion bridge to supplement the Brent Spence Bridge that carries Interstates 71 and 75 over the Ohio River between Covington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio.[120] Beshear hoped to fund the bridge through conventional means and not tolling; however, he was unsure if the state in fact had the funds to do that.[121] In 2021, Kentucky Senator Chris McDaniel (R-Taylor Mill), Northern Kentucky's top Republican state lawmaker and chair of the Senate finance and budget committee, said he was opposed to Beshear's proposal to use the state's rainy day fund or a general fund surplus to help pay for the project.[122]

Beshear promised in August 2019 to construct the Interstate 69 Ohio River Bridge between Henderson, Kentucky, and Evansville, Indiana, by 2023, stating: "we will build that I-69 bridge in my first term as governor."[123] The project would cost Kentucky $914 million (plus financing and interest costs).[123] He said he believed the project would provide economic benefits to Western Kentucky.[124]

Beshear wants to fund the state's pension system, which has accumulated US$24 billion in debt since 2000, the most of any state in the country. Beshear opposed pension cuts made by Bevin, and said he wants to guarantee all workers pensions for when they retire.[108] As of June 30, 2020, the Kentucky State Pension Fund was at 58.8% of its obligations for the coming decades.[125]