The election for Kentucky’s governor will be a referendum on Donald Trump

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.”

Mr Bevin’s Democratic challenger, Andy Beshear, seemed blessed, by contrast. He has both the pedigree, as the son of Steve Beshear, the well-regarded Democratic governor who preceded Mr Bevin, and the practical experience, as state attorney-general, to mount a successful gubernatorial campaign. Earlier in the campaign, when public polling was scarce, both campaigns operated as though the race were Mr Beshear’s to lose. But the most recent high-quality public poll, published on October 16th, showed the two men neck-and-neck.

To win, Mr Beshear must frame the election around the two biggest domestic concerns in the state—education and health care. Kentucky’s pension fund for teachers and public employees is among the most poorly provided in the country and a teacher shortage is getting worse. That has earned Mr Bevin a lot of criticism. “If you look not just at his words, but his actions—both are appalling,” says Tyler Murphy, a teacher in Boyle County. “Bevin, bless his heart, can’t pass the opportunity up when a microphone is around to insult a teacher,” says Jeni Bolander, a high-school teacher who is a member of Kentucky 120 United, a teacher-advocate group, as she canvasses for Mr Beshear in the eastern part of the state. She estimates that a few thousand teachers are also “knocking on doors and spreading the good word”. That may prove particularly effective in poor parts of the state where the local school districts are often the chief source of stable employment.

The other domestic anxiety that Mr Beshear would like to capitalise on is health care. As governor, his father oversaw the expansion of Medicaid, a key pillar of Obamacare, in the state where it was hailed as a national model. Mr Bevin has spent more than a year trying to obtain a waiver that would allow him to put work requirements on the programme, which provides health insurance for the very poor, and has threatened to reverse the expansion if he does not get his way. He has justified the idea both in terms of cost—because the state pays about 10% of the costs of the expansion—and values. When your correspondent asked him whether the point of the waiver was to save the state money, he flatly answered, “No”, and then held up both his index fingers, one of which was more curved than the other, the result of having had to set it himself when he was young. “I have scars on my body that we couldn’t afford to get stitched up so they’re as thick as a finger instead of thin as a string,” Mr Bevin said. “Every dollar we give to an able-bodied, working-age person with no disabilities and no dependents is a dollar we’re not able to provide… for those truly in need in our state”.

Many of the counties in Kentucky most reliant on Medicaid—both for health coverage and to keep rural hospitals financially solvent—are also steadfastly Republican strongholds. To make inroads with them, Mr Beshear must instil fear about the prospect of policy change. Whether he has done so is unclear. His campaign has at times lacked boldness. His speaking style can appear stiff and scripted, especially next to Mr Bevin. For all of his abrasiveness, the governor often appears the more genuine of the two.

Mr Bevin’s playbook is to not merely play defence on the education and health-care fronts, but to aggressively try to nationalise the election. His final campaign ad casts it as a referendum on impeachment. He has worked to ensure that abortion, guns and sanctuary cities are on voters’ minds. The improving state economy, which he links to the federal policies of the Trump administration, is another boon for him. The president is slated to lead an election rally in Lexington on November 4th—just one day before Kentuckians head to the polls.