Robert Kaltenbach

News Editor

     Despite widespread dissatisfaction with incumbents on a national level, Democrat Steve Beshear was easily re-elected as the governor of Kentucky on November 8. He defeated Republican challenger and state senate president David Williams by a margin of over twenty percentage points, a victory that was accompanied by wins for the Democrats in almost all of the other major races.

     Throughout the race, most polls had Beshear winning handily. In the weeks immediately preceding the election, Survey USA reported a twenty-five point lead and Braun Research a twenty-eight point lead. These polling predictions would ultimately be confirmed, with Beshear garnering fifty-five percent of the vote to Williams’s thirty-five percent.

     Analysts claim that the large margin of victory can be attributed to the Democrats running a superior campaign. According to an article by David Cantanese of Politico, the Beshear campaign was able to “outraise and outspend, define and discredit the opponent early and often, and position the incumbent as the steady, trusted hand to handle the dismal economic situation.”

     Beshear, a politician with many friends throughout the state, was able to raise over ten million dollars through extensive fundraising. Williams, in contrast, was only able to raise about two million.

     According to the Courier Journal, Williams “was never able to overcome the negative impressions that voters had formed of him during his decade leading the Kentucky Senate.” He was also criticized for questioning Beshear’s Christian faith after the governor took part in a Hindu ceremony to bless the ground at a new manufacturing plant in Elizabethtown.

     Finally, Beshear represented himself as being in the spirit of bipartisanship, saying that he was the candidate who would be the most successful in crossing party lines and finding solutions to the economic crisis.

     Beshear’s popularity among voters translated to Democratic victories in most of the other elections. Democrats won the races for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, and State Treasurer. James R. Comer was the only Republican to win an election, defeating Robert Farmer in the race for Commissioner of Agriculture.