12 MOTHER JONES |^ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019
OUTFRONTMitch McConnell. McConnell ran ads dubbing Bevin an “East
Coast con man.” Bevin’s challenge died after he was caught
on video at a pro-cockfighting rally.
A year later he ran for governor, positioning him-
self as a no-nonsense businessman running against the
establishment. This time, Bevin won a four-way primary by
83 votes and later cruised to a nine-point victory over his
Democratic opponent. “Kentucky’s gubernatorial races so
often become a predictor of the presidential election the
next year,” says Jonathan Miller, a former Democratic state
treasurer. Kentucky has trended Republican at the national
level for decades, even as Democrats dominated state poli-
tics. (They still boast a voter registration advantage.) Bevin
became the state’s second Republican governor since 1971,
and with Trump atop the 2016 ticket, Republicans took
control of the state House for the first time since 1921.
In January 2017, Bevin and the new Republican majority
quickly set to work passing a conservative wish list: tort reform,
a host of abortion restrictions, and a so-called right-to-work
law that brought Kentucky into line with
every other Southern state. Kentucky had
seen its uninsured rate drop from 20 percent
to 8 percent thanks to Obamacare, but Bevin
shuttered the state health insurance exchange
and now wants to add work requirements to
the state Medicaid program that could result
in tens of thousands of Kentuckians losing
their health coverage. (Those requirements
are on hold while they’re being disputed in
the courts.) He’s “Scott Walker’s politics with
Paul LePage’s mouth,” says Jason Bailey, ex-
ecutive director of the left-leaning Kentucky
Center for Economic Policy.
But Bevin’s pugilistic style and cringe-inducing statements
are bogging down the state gop at the very moment it has
its first opportunity in a century to enact its agenda. “He has
made life more difficult for himself than it probably had to
be,” says Scott Lasley, a political science professor at Western
Kentucky University and the 2nd District vice chair of the state
Republican Party. A dispute between Bevin and his lieutenant
governor, Jenean Hampton, dominated headlines earlier
this summer after his administration fired two of Hampton’s
aides without consulting her. “Pray for me as I battle dark
forces,” Hampton, who was dropped from Bevin’s reelection
ticket, tweeted after the firings. Democratic Attorney Gen-
eral Andy Beshear (son of former Gov. Steve Beshear) has
also become a persistent thorn in Bevin’s side, dragging him
into court to challenge his policies. Beshear will face Bevin
on the ballot in November.
But Bevin’s biggest mistake may be spending the past
two years picking fights with public school teachers. He
successfully pushed a law to allow charter schools, saying
he wanted to “end the monopoly that exists in Kentucky’s
school system,” and he’s attempted to weaken pension ben-
efits for public employees. Once again, Bevin piled personal
invective on top of right-wing policy.
Last year, when teachers held a sick-out to protest Bevin’sproposed pension cuts, the governor unleashed an unhinged
rant. “Here’s what’s crazy to me,” he told a reporter. “I guaran-
tee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually as-
saulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to
watch them.” (Republicans in the state House passed a resolu-
tion condemning Bevin’s comments, which he later apologized
for.) Bevin’s administration is trying to subpoena school dis-
tricts to determine which teachers participated in the sick-outs.
“This governor just keeps opening his mouth and putting
his foot in it,” says Stephanie Winkler, a fourth grade teacher
from Madison County who recently concluded her term
as president of the Kentucky Education Association (kea),
a powerful advocacy group for educators that has tangled
with Bevin. “And it’s on the minds of people. Anybody that
works in a public school.”
Alongside colleagues in West Virginia, Arizona, and Okla-
homa, Kentucky teachers joined the “Red for Ed” strikes of
2018, with educators frequently descending on the state Cap-
itol to protest. Last December, when Bevin called a postelec-
tion special legislative session to once again
try to pass changes to the pension system,
teachers flooded Frankfort to sing modi-
fied Christmas carols urging lawmakers to
leave things alone. After less than 24 hours,
legislators shut down the special session
without debating any proposals.
“The professional attacks are bad enough.
But then when you add on top of that the
utter disdain that he has for teachers and
public education in general, it’s not just a
professional insult, it’s a personal insult,”
Jacqueline Coleman, the Democrats’ can-
didate for lieutenant governor, tells me in
the hallway of John Hardin High School, after addressing
a crowded lunchroom of teachers at a kea conference in
Elizabethtown, a city of 30,000 people an hour south of
Louisville. Coleman, wearing a bright red blazer in a nod
to Red for Ed, has never held elected office before. But it’s
clear why she ended up on the ticket alongside Beshear.
Coleman is a former high school civics teacher and basket-
ball coach who was working as an assistant principal until
she took leave to campaign. “We are taking this personally,
and rightfully so,” she says. (Davis Paine, Bevin’s campaign
manager, says in a statement: “The Governor will not be
deterred by kea’s misinformation campaign and will con-
tinue to champion policies that strengthen our education
system and support teachers.”)
The teacher backlash poses a real risk for Bevin. According
to Winkler, schools are the biggest employer in most of Ken-
tucky’s 120 counties, and more than half of kea’s members are
Republican. Last year, Jonathan Shell, the state House majority
leader, lost his Republican primary to R. Travis Brenda, a math
teacher fed up with Shell’s role in co-writing a pension-cut bill.
“A lot of teachers in this state are Republicans, and a lot of
Republicans are teachers,” says Al Cross, the veteran Kentucky
journalist. “In November 2019, teachers are going to remember
what Matt Bevin said about them.” —Patrick Caldwell“This governor just
keeps opening his
mouth and putting
his foot in it.”