By I.K. | LEXINGTON, KY
FOR KENTUCKY DEMOCRATS, the feeling is all too familiar. A vulnerable Republican incumbent faces a popular challenger—only to narrow the polling gap in the final days of the campaign. This happened when Allison Lundergan Grimes challenged Mitch McConnell for a Senate seat in 2014 and when Amy McGrath challenged Andy Barr for a closely-watched House seat last year. In both cases the Republican won. That may be repeated in the state’s off-cycle governor’s race on November 5th. The result will also be seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump’s re-election chances next year.
For a while, the sitting Republican governor, Matt Bevin, looked eminently deposable. Mr Bevin has long been considered the country’s most unpopular governor—although his social conservatism and Tea Party roots ought to have endeared him to voters in one of America’s Trumpiest states. His unpopularity is in part due to his evident bad temper and a particularly bruising fight with the state’s teachers. When thousands of teachers, clad in red, turned up to the state legislature to agitate for more education funding, having called in sick, he said, “Children were harmed—some physically, some sexually, some were introduced to drugs for the first time—because they were left vulnerable and left alone.”
