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- ABC News
- October 20, 2015
What to Watch in These 3 Upcoming Governors' Races
How national issues are playing out in Louisiana, Kentucky and Mississippi.
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Vitter confessed in 2007 to being a long-time client of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the infamous “D.C. Madam,” who made millions arranging trysts for an upscale clientele in the nation’s capital (Vitter’s shameful chapter has been reprised in an attack ad). Despite a blemished record of his own, Vitter is hoping that campaigning on his contrasts with the tarnished sitting governor, including his openness to Medicaid expansion that Jindal shunned, will carry him to victory.
Kim Davis: Conscientious Objector or Scofflaw?:
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/conway_bevin_split_4x3t_384.jpg\")
KENTUCKY GUBERNATORIAL RACE
Kentucky’s Democrat Attorney General Jack Conway is in a tight race with businessman and Tea Party darling Matt Bevin, according to local polls.
WHY IT MATTERS
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis opened a new front in the impassioned debate over LGBT rights versus faith-based objection to gay marriage when she disobeyed her legal duty to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. To the extent Kentucky’s gubernatorial race is a referendum on this polarizing issue, Democrat Jack Conway’s record makes him the clear-cut marriage equality candidate.
While the attorney general disappointed some liberals by declining to prosecute Davis for criminal misconduct, Conway earned praise for his previous decision not to defend Kentucky’s gay marriage ban in court.
Meantime, Kentucky Democrats believe that a Conway victory would shift momentum to Democrats seeking to capture the U.S. Senate seat held by presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, who faces reelection in 2016. “Democrats believe if they win the governor’s race, it will prove they’re still viable in Kentucky and that will open up resources for their Senate candidate,” writes Scott Wartman on Gannett outlet Cincinnati.com.
An emboldened Democratic Senate challenge would come at a time of Republican handwringing over Paul’s decision to focus on his longshot presidential bid rather than securing Senate reelection.
As Attorney General, Conway distinguished himself as the only Democrat to join a lawsuit against the EPA over carbon emission regulations—a shrewd political maneuver in a state with an economy heavily reliant on the coal industry, and where Obama is deeply unpopular (the Democrat Conway actually brags about suing the president in a campaign ad).
Conway’s rival, businessman Matt Bevin, emerged as an ardent supporter of Kim Davis, and even engaged in a televised shouting match with CNN’s Don Lemon over the controversial clerk.
If his name sounds familiar it’s because you’ve heard it before: Bevin was Mitch McConnell’s primary opponent last year. They had a contentious primary battle, in which McConnell ended up easily beating the political novice, but not before Bevin angered establishment Republicans in the state and nationally. While Bevin’s plan to shut down Kentucky’s state-run health care exchange and eliminate Medicaid expansion conforms to mainstream Republican thinking, other positions are well outside party lines.
He believes the EPA has no authority over the states, and previously supported a push to legalize cockfighting (which he later denied.)
Democrats speculate Bevin’s fraught relationship with the GOP base explains the Republican Governors Association’s choice to stop running ads for him in September, which Bevin’s campaign hasn’t denied. The Tea Partier’s relationship to the establishment unraveled further when Bevin said during a radio interview that he would vote for Ben Carson over Kentucky’s native son Rand Paul—a slap in the faces of both Paul and McConnell, who’d previously endorsed Bevin and worked to rally the base around him.
Bevin quickly walked the statement back and Paul brushed the comment off, but the fracas appears to have increased tensions between Bevin and the party base. The right-wing candidate’s uneasy marriage to mainstream Republicanism is perhaps best captured in a quote by Larry Cox, the former state director for Mitch McConnell.
Asked by Cincinnati.com how he would vote on Nov. 3, Cox replied, “With reluctance.”
Is the Democratic Party Dead in Dixie?:
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/AP_gray_bryant_jef_151020_4x3t_384.jpg\")
MISSISSIPPI GUBERNATORIAL RACE
The race for Mississippi governor pits Republican incumbent Gov. Phil Bryant against the Hail Mary campaign of Democrat Robert Gray, a genuine political unknown with zero governing experience. Gray, a shy big-rig trucker who uses the CB handle “Silent Knight” and lives with his mother, did not vote in the primaries, he says, because he was busy running errands and lost track of time.
WHY IT MATTERS
The Mississippi gubernatorial election has come to symbolize the nadir of Democratic sway in the American South after decades of decline. As the New York Times quoted one Mississippi Democratic insider: “The party that was once the alpha and omega of Southern politics is now having to explain that its headline candidate in Mississippi was elected on the following grounds: ‘He was the first name on the ballot, and he was a man.’”
Disillusioned Democrats also face the prospect that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, dubbed the “last Democrat in Dixie,” could lose a tough reelection fight. Republicans, on the other hand, may find campaigning easier than governing. Last week saw hundreds march in Jackson, demanding that Mississippi’s state flag be redesigned without symbols of the Confederacy, a movement that grew out of the mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., perpetrated by a Confederate sympathizer. Gov. Bryant said the issue should be decided by voters rather than the state legislature.
But given Mississippi’s complicated initiative process, the earliest a flag redesign could appear on the ballot is 2018, which virtually guarantees the issue will continue to demand attention from the state’s next governor. With criminal justice reform emerging recently as an area of rare bipartisan agreement, governors of states like Mississippi, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the U.S, may face mounting pressure to continue to act on the bedeviling issue, as Gov. Bryant has quietly done by reducing the inmate population by 3,000 people over the past several months.
Although Gov. Bryant’s long-odds challenge from surprise candidate Gray may sound like a bizarre anomaly, it’s not a first for Southern politics. Alvin Greene, another unknown, rocked the political world by winning South Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary race in 2010, spawning bemused New York Times headlines, “Who Is Alvin Greene?” and “Enigmatic Jobless Man Prepares Senate Campaign.”
By all accounts, however, Gray is expected to face a similar fate as Greene: trounced by a much more seasoned incumbent Republican rival.
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