By Joseph Ax
Republican voters in Kentucky were casting ballots on Tuesday to choose their party's challenger to Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, setting up one of the most closely watched elections of the year.
Republican voters will also decide whether to replace the state's top election official, potentially putting a candidate who echoes former President Donald Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. election in charge of Kentucky's voting apparatus ahead of the 2024 election.
A dozen candidates are vying for the gubernatorial nomination, with three emerging as the leading contenders in public polls: state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a rising star who is the first Black person to hold his office; Kelly Craft, a former U.N. ambassador under Trump; and state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles.
The winner will face Beshear, who enjoys high approval ratings despite being a Democrat in a strongly Republican state, in the November general election.
The primary vote will test Trump's hold on the Republican electorate after he was indicted in New York last month on charges of falsifying business records and days after a federal civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing a magazine writer decades ago.
Trump won Kentucky in the 2020 election against Democrat Joe Biden by more than 25 percentage points.
While Cameron has Trump's official endorsement, other candidates have sought to claim the mantle of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement.
"The role of Donald Trump, the man, may be different from the role of Trumpism, the political orientation," said Stephen Voss, a University of Kentucky political science professor. "These candidates cannot afford to ignore the Trump vote."
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to challenge Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, on Monday endorsed Craft, recording a supportive phone message aimed at voters.
Craft, 61, whose husband is a billionaire coal magnate, has poured millions of dollars from her personal wealth into the campaign. Her allies have attacked Cameron as a political insider and highlighted his ties to Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky U.S. senator and Senate minority leader who has clashed with Trump.
Craft has focused on culture issues, including school policies affecting transgender students, and has vowed to "dismantle" the state education department. At a recent campaign event, she said Kentucky "would not have transgenders in our school system" if elected, according to the Lexington Herald Leader.
A campaign spokesperson told reporters she was referring to combating "woke ideologies" in school.
Republican lawmakers in April overrode Beshear's veto to enact a sweeping bill that outlawed gender-affirming care for minors and permitted teachers to refer to transgender students by their birth pronouns, among other limits.
Cameron, 37, has emphasized his record in office, reminding voters of his lawsuits against Beshear and the Biden administration over abortion, immigration and COVID-19 policies. In his first television ad, he attacked Beshear for closing churches during lockdown in 2020 and said he sued to ensure religious freedom was protected.
Quarles, 39, has largely avoided the fray, instead touting his rural background and criticizing Cameron and Craft for going negative. Polls have shown him trailing his better-financed rivals.
Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, who earned bipartisan praise for expanding voting options during the pandemic, is also on Tuesday's ballot.
One Republican challenger, Stephen Knipper, has echoed Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and endorsed conspiracy theories about voting machines. The third Republican in the race, Allen Maricle, has called for expanding investigations into voter fraud.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Will Dunham and Alistair Bell)
