In early October, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear will be making his second trip to New Hampshire, a traditional starting point for aspiring presidential candidates. Over the summer, he courted Democrats in Nebraska and South Carolina. He also recently launched a podcast on SiriusXM, which he’s calling “a space to bring people together.” In July, he told Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press that he was “taking a look” at launching a presidential bid.
Flashier governors in larger states—like Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois—are currently grabbing headlines and Democratic hopes for 2028. But Beshear may yet emerge as a strong contender. As the successful governor of a deep red state with a common-sense approach, everyman looks, and an almost quaint aversion to pretension, swing voters may see the 47-year-old Beshear as the perfect antidote to the escalating polarization of modern politics.
So may hardcore Democrats: Beshear’s no lightweight in his criticism of President Donald Trump. He called the “big, beautiful bill” that destroyed the Trump/Musk bromance the “worst bill I’ve seen in my lifetime” and condemned Trump’s indiscriminate tariffs as “chaos” that was “just making it harder” for the people of Kentucky. What he’s not doing is falling into the quagmire that has plagued the Democratic Party for nearly a decade. He’s not positioning himself as an exclusively anti-Trump figure. He’s not engaging in the clownish memesmanship of online combat à la Newsom, who’s circulated AI images of himself riding horseback into battle or shirtless and ripped with improbable abs. Nor does he have the gruff pugnaciousness of Pritzker, who’s positioned himself as a bulwark against Trump and suggested that Trump “might be suffering from some dementia” for threatening to deploy troops in his state.
Unlike Newsom and Pritzker, who are offering a message that is, at its core, all about Donald Trump, Beshear’s political identity is defined by his commitment to “explain our why” and offering solutions. He’s firm in opposing Trump but knows it’s not enough. Instead, he’s offering a vision for the future. It’s his conviction that Americans still want the basics—a better life for themselves and their kids—that sets him apart.
In a 2024 New York Times op-ed on the future of his party, Beshear called for a return to fundamental priorities: “creating better jobs, more affordable and accessible health care, safer roads and bridges, the best educations for our children and communities where people aren’t just safer but also feel safer.” He also argues that Democrats don’t have to “abandon important values and principles” to win in states like his.
And in fact, throughout his tenure in office, Beshear has never strayed far from even the most contentious policies of the Democratic Party. Like President Joe Biden, Beshear backed the United Auto Workers strike in October 2023 and joined the picket line. He regularly vetoed anti-LGBTQ bills because his “faith” teaches him that “all children are children of God,” actively opposed charter schools and school vouchers as threats to equal education, refused Trump’s offer to stop settling refugees in Kentucky, and signed an executive order banning conversion therapy. “Discrimination against our LGBTQ+ community,” he told one local audience, “is unacceptable, it holds us back, and in my Kentucky accent, it ain’t right.”
Working with his GOP legislature, the governor also expanded Medicaid, lowered prescription drug costs, built healthcare facilities in Appalachia, and legalized medical marijuana use—all laudable progressive accomplishments. As attorney general and governor, he attached his state and his administration to high-profile antitrust and anti-price gouging efforts in the pharmaceutical, gasoline, and tech sectors.
At the same time, Beshear has built an enviable economic record, despite a torrent of natural disasters that have pummeled his state over the last six years, including deadly tornadoes in the western part of the state (2021), severe flooding in the Appalachian region (2022), storms, tornadoes, and landslides severe enough to warrant a federal major disaster declaration as well as the tail end of Hurricane Helene (2024). Unemployment in the Bluegrass State has declined over the past six years, private industry has boomed, and wages have increased (aligning with and surpassing national trends). 2021 and 2022 were the best two-year period for economic growth in the state’s history, all while retaining a budget surplus. Last year, the state ranked third nationally in economic projects per capita. These achievements have won Beshear respect from the people of his state. Remarked one Kentucky native when I asked him if he’d consider supporting his governor in a 2028 presidential bid, “We all love Andy! Conservatives and Republican[s] … give him a lot of flak and can be so hateful as to hanging a stuffed dummy resembling Andy from a tree. But, when tornadoes or floods come … then you hear them screaming and hollering, ‘ANDY!’”
This is not to say Kentucky is a blue state in disguise. In March, its supermajority Republican legislature overrode the governor’s veto to force through new laws that eliminated all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in state agencies. The GOP has also passed laws that weakened labor protections and added language to the state’s near-total abortion ban that further confused doctors as to their legal rights and obligations.
One secret to Beshear’s success is his refusal to mire himself in Trump-style politics and his likeable, no-nonsense style. “We need to make sure that the outrage of the day is not what we’re talking about,” the governor told Charlestonians during a recent visit to South Carolina. “We’ve got to make sure that what we’re talking about are people’s everyday needs. And we’re talking to them like real human beings. And then we’re talking not just in terms of policies, but what our values are.”
Beshear has, in fact, criticized the stuffy, sanitized language of the left. At one event in South Carolina, Beshear denounced using the clinical term “substance use disorder” to describe addiction, an important and tragic issue in his state, which has been “hit by the opioid crisis harder than just about any other state.” “Every Kentuckian, including myself,” he continued, “knows about a dozen people who are no longer with us, a child of God taken [by addiction] far too soon … Addiction is mean, it’s nasty, it’s hard to beat, it kills people.” By calling it what it is—addiction—and speaking in such stark terms, Beshear is validating the raw emotionality and tragedy of this illness, rather than smoothing over its rough edges. That’s a message people can understand and can feel.
This basic ability to communicate with people about hardships they feel and issues that matter might be Beshear’s greatest asset. His party would do well to listen.
