Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear looks to have defeated incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin in the state's hard-fought gubernatorial contest.
With all voting precincts reporting, Beshear, a Democrat, has a narrow 4,650-vote lead over Republican Bevin. NBC News has called the election for Beshear.
Bevin, however, has said he is not conceding the race just yet and could ask election officials to check voting machines throughout the state or even conduct a recount. Under Kentucky law, Bevin's campaign would have to pay for that effort.
In amassing his slim lead, Beshear flipped some suburban Northern Kentucky counties that Bevin handily won in 2015 and that fellow Republican President Donald Trump took in the presidential election the next year.
Beshear narrowly won Kenton County and turned in a somewhat more robust performance in Campbell County. Bevin won both of those counties handily in 2015, grabbing 57 percent of the vote in Kenton.
This time around, Bevin easily took Boone County with 56 percent of the vote. He also took a large red swath of the central part of the state. However, that wasn't enough to turn back Beshear's decisive victories in the more liberal (and populous) counties containing Lexington and Louisville. Beshear also took a run of counties — Bath, Boyd, Carter, Elliott and Rowan — on Kentucky's eastern side and a handful of others around the state.
Beshear's apparent victory comes despite — or, depending on who you talk to, partly because of — Bevin's alignment with Trump. The president, who won Kentucky overall by 30 points in 2016, this week swooped through the Bluegrass State to campaign for Bevin.
"You're sending that big message to the rest of the country," Trump said at the rally. "It's so important — you have to get your friends, you have to vote. If you lose, it sends a really bad message... you can't let that happen to me."
Down ballot, Republicans did get a victory in the attorney general's race, where first-time candidate Daniel Cameron beat Democrat and former state House Speaker Greg Stumbo. Cameron is the state's first African-American attorney general and the first Republican to win a race for the office in 70 years.
Republicans got another victory in the state's secretary of state race, where GOP candidate Michael Adams pulled out a win over Democrat Heather French Henry.
In both races, Democrats are losing those statewide offices — Beshear was the previous attorney general, and current Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes is term-limited.
Despite Kentucky being one of five states to hold its gubernatorial elections on years without federal elections to draw big attention, it has been a bruising contest between the two focusing on tough questions around the region's aging Brent Spence Bridge, the state's ailing pension fund, related "sick-outs" by the state's public school teachers, health care policy, abortion and other big issues.
Bevin, currently finishing up his first term as governor, was a Trump-like outsider candidate with no previous political experience when he won election in 2015. He became just the third GOP governor since World War II to win election in Kentucky. The state had long been a Democratic Party stronghold but has shifted substantially toward Republicans in recent years.
Prior to his run for governor, Bevin launched a Tea Party-backed primary challenge to powerful senator Mitch McConnell in 2014 but lost.
Beshear, the son of former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, battled back primary challenges from fellow Democrats like Kentucky House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins and former Kentucky State Auditor Adam Edelen. Beshear took 38 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary compared to Adkins' 32 percent and Edelen's 28 percent. Adkins took many of the state's rural eastern counties, while Beshear did well in the state's urban areas.
Bevin's term in office has seen a number of controversies, including contention over his move to end the state's Medicaid expansion (potentially costing up to 400,000 Kentuckians their healthcare), questions around the sale of a mansion to the Bevin family by a donor and uproar from some in Kentucky over comments he has made about vaccinations and cold-weather school closings, as well as his suggestion that Kentucky students experienced molestation or abuse during a public teacher sick-out. That sick-out came as a protest against moves Bevin has made to try and shore up the state's ailing pension fund, which is deeply underfunded.
The tumult around the governor's office likely weakened Bevin to a degree, and his showing in the primary wasn't as dominant as expected from an incumbent governor in a state controlled by his own party. His main primary competitor, Kentucky State Rep. Robert Goforth, got almost 40 percent of the vote to Bevin's 52 percent.
But staunch pro-life groups and other conservative activists supported Bevin, and the governor used his anti-abortion stances to try and rally conservative voters in Kentucky, a state which voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in the last presidential election.
Beshear had a controversy of his own to contend with — allegations of corruption against his deputy attorney general Tim Longmeyer, who in 2016 was found guilty of accepting bribes during his time in Gov. Steve Beshear's cabinet. There isn't any evidence the younger Beshear knew about those bribes, but his primary opponent Edelen used the incident to attack Beshear.
The candidates fought bitterly with each other during their terms. In 2017, Beshear said he wouldn't try to defend the state against federal legal challenges to a Kentucky law banning abortion after 20 weeks because he believed it is unconstitutional. Bevin has staunchly supported that law and blasted Beshear for the decision. Beshear has challenged executive orders issued by Bevin and has filed a number of lawsuits against Bevin's administration.
Both described the race in stark terms when they launched their campaigns.
“It is not about what’s going on in Washington, D.C,” Beshear said at his primary victory party. “It’s not about the nasty attacks that Matt Bevin has already launched, starting tonight. And it’s not about right versus left, folks. It’s about right versus wrong.”
Bevin expressed almost the same sentiment from the opposite side of the partisan divide.
“People in Kentucky are going to have a very clear and distinct choice in November,” Bevin said after the results came in during the GOP primary. “Conservative versus liberal, black and white, it’s that clear.”
