Andy Beshear Is Already Making His Case For 2028

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Andy Beshear has heard the chatter.

Yes, he’s great on paper. Here’s a mainstream Southern Democrat who has won in deep red America — a white guy, if we want to be unsubtle about it all.

It’s the sort of resume that has already prompted legions of liberals from blue America to become “Andy Curious,” as Beshear’s backers describe them.

But, the rap goes, he’s totally lacking in what the kids call “rizz.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate me,” Beshear, the Kentucky governor, said last week when I invoked the knock on him that, two years before the presidential primary, is already the talk in Democratic circles.

Then, with equal parts defensiveness and determination, he unspooled his electoral history here and how he proved those wrong who argued he was the beneficiary of weak opponents and good timing. “So, if people want to underestimate me, I'm used to it, and it drives me.”

OK, Beshear thinks he does have some “rizz?”

“Maybe a little aura,” the governor shot back, sounding very much like the 48-year-old father of two teenagers.

The primaries before the midterm elections haven’t even started yet, but Beshear is running for president. His local political advisers are thinking deeply about his strategy, and he’s tapped a handful of national strategists to guide him in these early days.

However, the real giveaway is that Beshear already has a two-pronged theory of the case about why he’s positioned to be his party’s nominee in 2028. And he was happy to say it out loud to me, the morning after I attended his State of the Commonwealth speech here.

Sitting in Kentucky’s old governor’s mansion — its capitol is under a multi-year renovation — Beshear offered only cursory nods to what candidates are supposed to say this far out from a White House race before getting to his argument. A case, if you doubted his intentions, he made while taking an unmistakable shot at early frontrunner Gavin Newsom.

“Democratic primary voters are going to be, number one, focused on electability,” the second-term governor told me, adding that the driving force of the next primary will be: “Who do we believe has the best chance of beating J.D. Vance?”

And, he said, that’s him.

“I’m a guy who has won three straight statewide elections in a Trump plus-30 state,” Beshear said, alluding to his win as attorney general before becoming governor. Rattling off Kentucky’s economic growth, healthcare gains and crime decline, he said: “I think it's a mixture of both electability and the idea that, here's somebody that not only could win in a purple state, he wins in a red state.”

So, the governor added in case you missed the point: “You both want somebody who's electable, but then somebody who can deliver.”

But what, I asked, about his other fundamental challenge — that he’s an affable fellow whose political calling card is that he’s a uniter who wants to sand down differences and revive faith in the American dream? Won’t Democrats be hungry for combat rather than consensus after nearly four years of Trump detonating institutions same as he did the East Wing?

That’s the other element of Beshear’s case.

“Democrats and a lot of Republicans are going to look for someone who can right the ship, hopefully who can heal the country and who can get us past our McCarthyism moment and back to a more stable time,” he said.

And by the time of the next presidential primary, he said, that will be apparent.

“See, I think by the time that we reach 2028, the country is going to be tired,” Beshear argued. “And they're going to be so tired of what Trump has done, the idea of having a Democratic version of Trump is more than that — it's exhausting.”

Yet hasn’t Newsom taken off with Democrats because he’s punching the bully back and doing so in a way that commands attention?

“I think that excites people,” Beshear allowed, noting that he’s standing up to Trump by filing lawsuits against the federal government and that he “talks about them publicly in a Trump plus-30 state.”

Contrasting himself with the governor of California, a Democrat plus-a-lot state, Beshear said, “I don't believe in responding to Trump like Trump. And I was always taught that if one person's yelling and you start yelling out…”

Nobody can hear anything, I interjected.

“Exactly,” Beshear said.

Privately, I’m told by people close to Beshear, the governor has described the road to the Democratic nomination as a multi-lap horse race — what other metaphor would a Kentuckian use? — and believes Newsom will tire before the finish line.

So, should his party avoid nominating a coastal candidate, who could be vulnerable to Republican caricature about liberal extremism?

When I asked him why Kamala Harris lost and whether she had fallen victim to precisely that attack, Beshear didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

However, when I pressed him about nominating another liberal from one of the two coasts, Beshear was more cautious.

“The Democratic Party needs to nominate a Democratic governor,” he said.

No matter where they’re from?

“Well, Republicans might have an easier target on a Democratic governor from the coast,” he allowed, before adding: “To me, it's more important that it is a Democratic governor, regardless of where they're from.”

It was a keep-powder-dry moment and not the only one during our conversation. When we discussed Newsom’s trolling, Beshear made certain to clarify something after presenting his skepticism about responding to Trump with Trumpian tactics.

“The way Trump's attacking California is different,” Beshear observed. “And so I understand what Gavin is doing is standing up for his people in his unique — well, not necessarily unique — but in his situation.”

It was the hedge of a man who’s taken over the Democratic Governors Association this year as chair, a post that will let him travel the country campaigning in purple America and fundraising in blue America. It’s also a job in which Beshear needs all the would-be and current Democratic governors, even lame ducks, to know he loves them so they’ll help raise money.

I also, though, wonder if it was the hedge of somebody who grew up in politics and learned at the wheel when, at 19, he was his father’s driver during a Senate campaign. Beshear’s dad, who’d become another two-term Kentucky governor, was in the game throughout his son’s early and adult life. And a political lifer knows to keep his options open. (A political scion, also, should never be underestimated because, whether they'll admit it or not, they're always eager to outdo their parent.)

Which brings me to the other Beshear buzz already making its way through Democratic conversations, in Kentucky and beyond: that running a credible campaign for president will only enhance his more realistic ambition, to join the next ticket as vice-president or the next administration as attorney general or something nearly as appealing.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody reading this column, Beshear denied running for the best possible gig in the next Democratic White House.

“I'm not running for anything right now, but I would say that that would be cynical and wrong,” he said of my question. (Let’s come back to this sentence in 2029, shall we?)
For a Southern pol who has been on the bbq, beans and ham circuit — Kentucky has signature gatherings featuring all three — his entire life, Beshear is more earnest than he is a back-slapper.

As with Newsom, he can recite a sprawling array of data about his state without notes. And it takes very little to prompt such recitations. At the end of our interview, Beshear brought up a new hospital he had helped build in Louisville, and I joked that we had nearly made it through the whole conversation without him citing some specific locale’s economic growth. He hadn’t even mentioned how many jobs he’d delivered to Marshall County (home of the bean supper, incidentally).

“You heard a lot of it last night,” Beshear said.

I had.

Beshear’s State of the Commonwealth — held in Kentucky’s superb state history museum because of the Capitol construction — was his second to last. But much of it sounded like a victory lap of a governor on his way out the door.

Beshear trumpeted all those new jobs and his accomplishments in healthcare and education, with a video slideshow full of Andy-in-blazer-and-open-collar shirt to reinforce his legacy. Yes, there was a plea to Republicans, who enjoy legislative super-majorities in both chambers, to pass universal pre-K.

However, the governor tipped the fate of the proposal when he all but urged GOP lawmakers to consider something beyond how much it could help his future presidential campaign. “If you’re against this because you think it gives me a win, what you’re really doing is handing these kids a loss,” Beshear said.

There were ample other clues in the speech that the governor was already thinking beyond the fights of Frankfort. He repeatedly contrasted his approach in Kentucky with the country’s toxic politics, “rage vs results,” declared his state could lead the country “Into the light,” and denounced the “big, ugly bill” Washington Republicans passed last year.

The truth is that beyond the fact of his electoral success in a Republican state, Beshear, when he runs, will be best known for his sober response to Covid-19 and other disasters that have befallen Kentucky, along with his refusal to bow to the right on abortion and trans rights.

He plainly doesn’t think his party’s struggles between the coasts require a full-scale pivot to the center, a la another Southern governor who ran in 1992. The messenger and focus — along, presumably, with a better political climate — is sufficient for Democrats to reclaim the White House, he thinks.

“I'm a pro-business, pro-union Democrat that vetoed an anti-trans bill,” he said. “So you know, I believe in standing up for people's rights. I believe strongly in them. At the same time, I spent 80 percent of my time on jobs, infrastructure, healthcare, public safety and public education.”

Which is to say Beshear is a conventional modern Democrat who’s unlikely to fail any activist group’s litmus tests. In fact, his allies, already eyeing liberal primary voters, are eager to trumpet his unflinching stance on cultural issues.

“He vetoed the anti-transgender bill in the same year of his reelection and ran ads supporting abortion access,” notes Sherman Brown, a Frankfort lobbyist. “And he was reelected by a bigger margin than he had in 2019.”

When I asked the governor where he’d deviate from party orthodoxy, he sang out of the Abundance™ hymnal.

“I think the overregulation is real,” he said, citing Biden-era legislation that was to expand broadband and internet access. “Five years from its passage, and there's still not an inch of fiber in the ground.”

Yes, but what about energy and the environment more broadly? Beshear was, as ever, careful. But he went a little further.

There was first some to-be-sure language. He’s the first Kentucky governor to publicly say climate change is real — take that, dad! — and its impact is undeniable, Beshear said.

“But as we look at our future energy needs, we need a more realistic approach,” he continued. “And that realistic approach is that older forms of energy production aren't going to go offline as quickly as some Democrats wanted them.”

Where Beshear is more comfortable scolding his party is on tone rather than substance.

“We can't be preachy Democrats that say: ‘You might not feel safe, but look at the statistics.’”

Yet asked how he describes his own politics, Beshear won’t call himself a moderate when given the chance.

“I describe myself as pragmatic,” he said.

For all the anti-Trump energy on the left, that’s where he thinks Democrats will be, both when it comes to their choice for president and how they want that person to govern.

After our interview, and hearing my skepticism, Beshear advisers sent me polling data from Gallup last fall showing that well over half of Democrats want leaders who compromise and just 15 percent said they preferred those who “stick to their beliefs and risk inaction.”

Beshear isn’t the only ambitious Democrat making the same bet. Rahm Emanuel is convinced, as he told Axios’s Alex Thompson, that there will be a “resistance wing dominated by Gavin” and a “renewal wing” that he’d like to lead.

The governor is staking his own claim.

“Oh, I think when we look, especially at the federal government, which [Trump is] decimating, he’s burning to the ground, you don't just say, we're going to rebuild it all back as it was before,” said Beshear. “You build something more efficient, you build something more effective.

Yet you can’t build anything if you can’t get the nomination. And while he won’t call himself a moderate, that’s the only lane available to him. Which begs the central question every modern, would-be Democratic nominee has confronted: Can they win Black voters?

When I walked into the living room of the old governor’s mansion, I spied the usual markers of Kentuckiana: a KFC bucket emblazoned with Beshear’s face, a commemorative bottle of Maker's Mark and a baseball from the University of Louisville’s College World Series. (Sorry, Big Blue Nation, nothing to show off when you haven’t won a title since 2012).

However, the most striking feature of the room was an oil painting featuring a group of Black horse jockeys.

At the dawn of competitive horse-racing in America, Beshear explained, most of the jockeys were African American. “And when the sport got big, they were all pushed out,” he said. “So in the middle [of the painting] is the very first Derby-winning jockey.”

Beshear grasps the importance of Black voters, even in a border state that’s far whiter than some of its Southern neighbors. He banished the statue of Kentucky-born Jefferson Davis from the state capitol, signed a law making Juneteenth a state holiday and that new Louisville hospital? It’s in the city’s underserved Black enclave.

On-message Andy is ready with a nicely turned line.

“Part of working with the African American community is the recognition that I will never be able to feel the weight of racism, of Jim Crow, the scars that are still carried,” he said. “And I think if you admit that, and you're willing to have these conversations, that you can build trust.”

Plus, I noted, as a devout Christian who cites scripture nearly as often as he does county-level job gains, he’s comfortable worshiping in a Black church.

“I can walk into any church,” Beshear said.

But — about that “rizz” again?

“No, I can’t sing at all,” he admitted.