Dem
47
GOP
53
Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) is on everyone's shortlist for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. After all, he's a moderate governor of a Southern state. The Party has had very good luck with that candidate profile in the last half-century—i.e., Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton.
Whether such a candidate can flip a few Southern states (Missouri? Texas? Florida? North Carolina?), the way Carter and Clinton were able to, is an excellent question. Maybe so, but maybe not. Today's politics are more polarized than they were one and two generations ago, and the white-Southern-Democrats-to-Republicans conversion process is now effectively complete. It's at least possible that the Democrats' "If we just nominate a Southerner..." is the rough equivalent of the Republicans' "If we just nominate a Black guy..." The latter may seem like a recipe for electoral magic, but it rarely proves to be so (see James, John; Walker, Herschel; Robinson, Mark; etc.).
In any event, that's a question for the future, and one that won't have a clear answer for at least a couple of years. The question that will need to be answered before that is: Will Beshear (or any of the other Southern Democratic governors) run in 2028? Given that Beshear is a popular candidate, and given that people rarely get elected governor and say "Well, I could shoot for more, but I've risen high enough, I think," and given that he's already taken a pass on running for his state's open Senate seat next year, and given that he's going to take over as chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) next year, the answer is almost certainly "yes."
And on Sunday, Beshear added to the mountain of evidence that he's running in 2028. Sitting for an interview on CNN's State of the Union to share his (very negative) assessment of the BBB, he was asked about his presidential aspirations. Not only did he not give the "Full Sherman," he said that while he would not have dreamed of mounting a presidential bid a couple of years ago, he may have no real choice now, out of a sense of duty. The key soundbite was: "I do not want to leave a broken country to my kids or anyone else's."
Beshear has clearly studied his governors-turned-presidents, in particular the one-time governor of a Northern state, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR, when he ran the third and fourth times, knew that his opponents were saying he thought he was bigger than George Washington, and that he had dictatorial aspirations. And so, he arranged things to make it look like he was reluctant to serve a third term (and a fourth term) and that he was only doing it because he'd been drafted by his peers.
Beshear doesn't have the same problem FDR did in 1940 and 1944, but he nonetheless knows that the voters love the idea of a reluctant leader (like Washington actually was), one who is governed by a sense of duty and not by his or her own ambitions. We don't actually believe Beshear is reluctant, and we don't actually believe he never considered running for president until recently, but it's a good and an effective storyline to put out there, if he can sell it.
At this point, there are really only two things that could stop Beshear from getting in: (1) He becomes enmeshed in some sort of scandal that makes a bid impractical or (2) Some other Democratic candidate builds so much momentum that challenging them becomes a fool's errand. We very much doubt that either of these things will happen. The additional good news for the Governor is that he already has name recognition and so does not need to jump in extra early, and also that money is not likely to be a problem (see above).
Interestingly, given the appeal of the Carter/Clinton model, the Democrats actually haven't tried their luck with a state governor (Southern or otherwise) in a long time. In fact, since Bubba left office, there have been roughly 400 Democratic presidential caucuses and primaries, and only one of those 400 was won by someone who had served as a state governor. If you would care to guess, before seeing the answer, we will put the name at the bottom of the page. (Z)