Andy Beshear heads to Democratic National Convention with promise and predicaments

The news of Kamala Harris’ vice presidential selection broke on Tuesday morning, but Andy Beshear saw the writing on the wall days before.

When he was not summoned for an in-person interview with the presumptive Democratic nominee last weekend, it meant Kentucky’s governor hadn’t made the finals.

But in politics, there’s always another campaign.

And next to being plucked out of Frankfort and onto the Democratic ticket, Beshear’s second-fastest stamp to a national political role is likely an appointment inside a potential Harris administration.

For this to happen, Harris needs to win – and Beshear has already signaled his readiness to play the part of loyal partisan soldier for the coming three months.

“I plan on being at the convention. I look forward to leading our delegation,” Beshear told the Herald-Leader in an interview Wednesday. “In the end, I just want this ticket to win. And I don’t have an ego about how to help them. If they want me to take a big role in the convention, I’m willing. If they have a different direction, as long as it helps them win, I’m for it.”

Beshear has already spent the summer traversing political terrain far outside of the commonwealth with stops in Iowa, Georgia, Oklahoma and Illinois, where he’s made new introductions and connections.

More stops are in the offing, likely in service to the Harris-Walz banner in places like Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, where he can convey a connection to rural voters.

The Democratic National Convention, which kicks off Aug. 19 in Chicago, provides the biggest stage for Beshear’s career to date.

The assignment inside the United Center will be doing everything to lift up the Harris-Walz campaign, but the opportunity to wow tens of thousands of delegates, activists, donors and media figures is as close to unparalleled in the modern political ecosystem.

And in this sense, Beshear’s whirlwind two-week experience inside the veepstakes only bolstered prospects for his political future.

“It’s funny how a totally amorphous process like the VP selection can still result in winners and losers. [Tim] Walz is, obviously, the winner. [Josh] Shapiro is the loser,” said Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist and New York political consultant who has worked for Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Schumer.

“Beshear is a winner — he elevated himself, got into the national conversation, didn’t face the kind of scrutiny and (opposition research) applied to Shapiro, will get attention at his speech at the convention and if Harris loses, is now clearly in the mix for 2028 and can start raising money pretty soon after the election for it if he wants.”

Beshear for President?

In Frankfort, Beshear’s lofty political ambitions have been an open secret, long prior to President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 campaign.

Phillip Wheeler, a Republican state senator from Pikeville, said a close friend of his has heard it directly from the governor.

“I have a very close friend who is a Republican who supported him, gave him a lot of money. Gov. Beshear flat-out told him and several people that he intended to run for president,” Wheeler told the Herald-Leader. “I don’t think he was intending to run this time. But clearly I think there has been talk.”

Everything, of course, depends on what happens in November.

But if Harris won, experts expect her to seek her own two full terms as president, along with a running mate, Tim Walz, whose own ambitions could swell with time inside Washington. If that all happened, Beshear’s shot at the White House could very well vanish.

With Beshear’s second term as Kentucky’s governor expiring in December 2027, the best case scenario for a presidential run would be in 2028. If Harris is successful, that’s when she’ll be running for a second term, bulldozing the well-laid plans of a generation of Democrats.

Jonathan Miller, a Washington-based Beshear ally who served as Kentucky’s state treasurer, has already hoisted a “Beshear 2032” signpost.

Though if Harris loses to Donald Trump, recriminations inside the Democratic Party will fling far and wide. Near the top of the post-mortems will inevitably be the question of whether Harris was too liberal a nominee to secure the confidence of swing voters in Middle America, and whether Democrats need to turn back to the center ideologically.

In this scenario, if the answer is yes, the antidote could very well be Beshear.

“I don’t buy the notion that the Democratic Party is moving left. Bernie Sanders lost to Biden, he lost to Hillary [Clinton]. The Squad seems to be losing members, not gaining them,” noted Richard Goodstein, a Democratic lobbyist who attended a Beshear event in Washington this summer.

“Talk about swimming against the tide...You have to have special political skills to carry Kentucky as a Democrat for two terms.”

Another Bill Clinton?

When Democrats reach for a politician analogous to Beshear, they often cite Bill Clinton.

“He is a young Bill Clinton—full of charisma and smart as a whip,” said Roy Barnes, a former Democratic governor of Georgia.

Elected president at 46 – Beshear’s current age – Clinton was also a smooth-talking centrist governor from a small state (Arkansas) who defied long odds to widen his party’s appeal through his natural connection with working-class people.

He is also the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry Kentucky, which points to a bygone era when the state was competitive at the national level.

It’s hard to find a political observer who thinks Beshear could deliver Kentucky’s eight electoral votes if he appeared on the ticket. That red state geography is one of the reasons Beshear failed to make it into Harris’ vice presidential finals.

Or as Barnes explains it, an “accident of birth.”

As much as Clinton serves as a tempting comparison, it may be obsolete considering how much more ethnically diverse and regionally segregated the Democratic Party is now compared to 28 years ago.

A Pew Research Center study last year found that 44% of Democratic Party voters are Hispanic, Black, Asian or multiracial. Just 11% of Kentucky’s voting eligible population are minorities, posing a potential challenge for Beshear in winning over a broader constituency.

“I don’t know if you can win a Democratic primary as a moderate,” said Wheeler, who acknowledged the same assessment could be rendered in his party. “I think it’s tough to be the kid from Arkansas nowadays, kind of the Bill Clinton … I think it’s really tough to run for president from a smaller state like Kentucky.”

Nonetheless, it’s the veritable, silver-haired Clinton network that Beshear has tapped to make inroads with new potential donors and supporters.

When Beshear sought face time with a cadre of Washington lobbyists and consultants in July, his advisers enlisted David W. Jones, a well-connected lobbyist and member of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s national finance committees.

Jones drafted former Virginia governor and Clinton confidante Terry McAuliffe as a headliner for the Beshear event in order to guarantee a crowd. It also helped that McAuliffe’s gubernatorial term overlapped with Andy’s father, Steve Beshear, who boasts useful cross-country relationships from his two terms in office.

The meetings were deemed a success.

Beshear got in front of several hundred people across multiple events in which he bobbed around questions about Biden, plugged his political action committee and touted his accomplishments in Kentucky.

“He doesn’t sound terribly partisan when he’s talking, even at the events in D.C. A lot of folks are like, ‘I want to learn more, I’m interested. I want to meet him,” said Mark Riddle, a Democratic political consultant who helped organize Beshear’s Washington outing.

A TIME FOR SCRUTINY

One of Beshear’s most striking feats during the volatile veepstakes process was ducking hard-core opposition from the online left, an unorganized army of progressive activists who spend countless daily hours online picking fights and scrutinizing policy records of Democratic politicians.

Beshear’s willingness to stand up for abortion rights, transgender youth and unions in a red state earned him cache with progressives, who wouldn’t be counted on as natural allies.

“He has a strong record on the issues that a lot of grassroots Democrats care about these days, including labor rights. I was struck by how he joined the UAW picket line last year,” said Mehdi Hasan, the former MSNBC host who now runs his own left-of-center website, Zeteo News.

If he had gotten within a knife’s edge of the job – like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro did – that all could’ve changed.

But a larger spotlight will mean greater scrutiny.

Some observers have already picked at the coal-state governor’s position on climate change, acknowledging the reality of the issue, but staying quiet on the thornier questions about how to mitigate it.

Where does he stand on arming Israel’s enduring war in Gaza? How about the Biden-backed plan to install term limits for Supreme Court justices? Does he think the U.S. Senate should scrap the filibuster?

Beshear’s mantra – “Focus on people’s everyday challenges. Don’t get caught up on the issue of the day in D.C,” – as he stated in a local television interview in Iowa, works when you’re governor. It’ll be much harder to stick to that script if he reaches for national office or is tempted by a U.S. Senate seat left open by Mitch McConnell in 2026.

While a Senate seat run is consistently raised as in the realm of possibilities, many Democrats doubt Beshear would risk a defeat in a contest that would be centered on national currents outside of his control.

“He’s always downplayed it, but whether it’s in ‘26 or the seat opens up early, I think there will be tremendous pressure on him by Democrats in Kentucky and nationally to stay engaged and get in the race,” said Kim Geveden, a Somerset-based Democratic political consultant.

Even if it results in a loss, it could be used as a vehicle to stay relevant and buttress his fundraising network to keep his options open for the grand prize.

As he told KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, Beshear appears eager to showcase his talents outside of Kentucky in the near-term.

“I also am a person that listens and can go into any state and talk to folks that are there,” he said.

“It’s not messaging – it’s purpose.”

This story was originally published August 8, 2024 at 6:00 AM.