Veepstakes: Beshear campaigns for Harris — and running mate status

The second-term Democrat may soon have a new calling card. With Harris’ meteoric rise to the top of the ticket last week, she now has just days to choose a running mate. And Beshear is one of the few front-runners for the job.

For his supporters, Beshear can appeal to blue-collar and rural voters who have long despised national Democrats. Beshear twice won the top office in Kentucky, a county so solidly Republican that Joe Biden won only two of its 120 counties in 2020.

That’s one reason the campaign deployed it Sunday in Forsyth County, a Republican stronghold where Democrats have long struggled to make inroads. Many residents said they’d never seen a crowd like this at a Democratic event here.

“We felt like we were in civilian clothes. We always have to be careful. But eight years ago, a group like this wouldn’t have gotten together,” said Lynne Nielsen, a retired Forsyth teacher, who added, “We’re getting louder and louder and prouder.”

Beshear has also become a vocal critic of U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s new running mate. He has criticized Vance as a “fake” who doesn’t represent the Appalachian region, saying Vance may have family in Kentucky but “he’s not from here.”

On Sunday, he took his criticism a step further by mentioning how Trump, at a rally this weekend in Florida, again resorted to insults, calling Harris a “bum.”

“If he wants to see a bum, he should look in the mirror. And what he’s going to see when he looks back is multiple bankruptcies and 34 felony convictions,” Beshear said of a New York jury’s May guilty verdict against Trump on corruption charges.

He then added: “JD Vance looks in the mirror, he doesn’t see any conviction at all.”

At first glance, Forsyth County might seem like an odd place to open a Democratic campaign office — and bring in a big-name speaker like Beshear.

It’s a staunchly Republican county, one that no Democratic candidate has won since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. Biden failed to get a third of the vote here four years ago.

But Democrats have made marginal gains in Forsyth and other fast-growing suburban areas over the past decade, capitalizing on demographic shifts as liberal-leaning voters from within Atlanta and beyond move to the outer reaches of the metro area.

Trump won 71% of the county’s vote in 2016 and about 66% in 2020. Local Democrats say they aim to keep him closer to 60% in Forsyth in November, part of a strategy to narrow margins in other deeply red counties across the state.

Credits: Ben Gray

Credits: Ben Gray

“There are a lot of Democratic votes to be won here. We still have a long way to go to become a blue county, but we’re not an 80-20 county anymore,” said Becky Woomer, one of the county’s most influential local Democratic activists.

“We’re on the same path as Gwinnett,” she said of the neighboring county, which has shifted from a Republican stronghold to a Democratic stronghold over the past eight years. “And it’s women who are tired of having their rights taken away.”

Georgia Democrats believe Harris’s rise to the presumptive nominee has changed the electoral landscape in Georgia, giving them new hope of repeating Biden’s victory in November 2020. She will headline an event in Atlanta on Tuesday, one of her first stops since Biden dropped out of the race.

Forsyth Republicans have also stepped up their mobilization efforts. This week, the local Republican Party held a grassroots training program that drew dozens of volunteers. Organizers took advantage of Democrats’ growing enthusiasm for Harris to galvanize conservatives.

“No matter who Democrats nominate, we must redouble our efforts to get voters out to vote,” the Forsyth GOP urged his supporters.

Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Trump ally who once represented parts of Forsyth in Congress, warned local Republicans that too much is at stake to let up.

He also mocked Democrats for switching allegiances so quickly to Harris, even though Biden won the party’s primary in a landslide earlier this year.

“If he’s going to explain to Democrats why their primary votes were a waste of this boring ‘democracy,’ he could have just sent them a message,” Collins said.

As in 2022, Democrats believe the key to success in November will be mobilizing voters angered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Beshear and the other finalists to be Harris’ political partner — a group of mostly white men who hold state-level offices in key battleground states — each campaigned on their support for abortion rights.

On Sunday, Beshear was joined by Hadley Duvall, an abortion rights activist from Kentucky who gave an emotional speech about her tumultuous childhood. She first spoke about her stepfather’s sexual abuse a day after Roe was overturned, and has since been featured in ads for Beshear and Biden.

She said in an interview that she was telling skeptical voters who have long voted Republican not to view support for Harris as a “vote for Democrats, but a vote for public education, a vote for women’s rights, a vote for your daughters, a vote for your granddaughters.”

“There’s so much at stake that even if your economic beliefs may align in other ways, your human beliefs and your moral beliefs should align with those of Democrats,” she said.

As for Beshear, he wouldn’t say what his future holds. Nor did he mention the other potential candidates at the center of the running mate rumor: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. But he said he was “honored” to be in the conversation.

“Kentucky is in my DNA and this is a dream job to serve our people,” he said. “The only reason I would consider anything else is if I could help Kentucky more and if we could take some of what we’ve done in Kentucky and spread it across the United States.”

Credits: Ben Gray

Credits: Ben Gray