A one-on-one primary could stir energy in KY’s Democratic Party

Rocky Adkins, who announced his candidacy Tuesday, was a longtime member of the state House, and its floor leader. He represented a rural district, and rural voters were his base of support when he lost the 2019 primary by 6 percentage points to Andy Beshear, who made him his senior adviser in the governor’s office. A rough-and-ready stump speaker, he is the closest thing the party has to Wendell Ford, who could rouse crowds even after he retired from the Senate in 1998.

Jacqueline Coleman, who announced April 20, is in her eighth year as Beshear’s lieutenant governor. A former teacher, coach, and principal, her core political base is teachers, whose support was essential to Beshear’s first election, and she has made inroads among other elements of organized labor, with which Adkins has long been aligned. She has become a smooth campaigner and speaker, and appeals to younger and more liberal elements of an increasingly liberal party.

Put simply, Coleman, 44, represents the new Democratic Party, dominated by urban areas and women, and Adkins, 66, looks like the old one, which has lost many if not most of the rural conservatives who voted for him in 2019.

That would seem to argue for Coleman, but only in the primary. Kentucky is now a Republican state.. First District Rep. James Comer seems assured of the Republican nomination and is the favorite for the fall. Adkins’ underlying argument, which he so far has left to others, is that to keep the governorship, Democrats must nominate him. “There’s only one Democrat in this state who can beat the Republicans,” Ray Perry, Adkins’ successor as senior adviser, said at Adkins’ first fundraiser Tuesday.

Adkins has followed his party leftward on one key issue, saying he now supports abortion rights and regrets voting for the “trigger law” that gave Kentucky an almost-complete ban on abortion in 2022 when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. That 1973 decision that “probably had it right,” Adkins told WHAS-TV. Coleman has been endorsed by Hadley Duvall, the rape victim whose TV commercial on the issue was key to Beshear’s re-election in 2023.

A May 12-13 poll for the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association gave Coleman a big advantage, but I think the questionnaire was slightly skewed toward Coleman, a member of the group. Her campaign said it had nothing to do with the wording of the poll. Another piece of the survey worth noting: It polled people who said they usually vote in Democratic primaries, and found 56 percent were women, showing the party’s evolution.

If Adkins’ challenge is appealing to female, urban and younger voters, Coleman’s challenge may be financing her campaign. She reported raising just over $300,000 through June 30, a modest amount; Adkins won’t have to file a quarterly finance report until October, and he has more longstanding relationships with Kentuckians who finance campaigns.

Coleman’s finance report illustrates her base. Of the 62 contributors who gave the $2,200 maximum, 29 were women, larger than the usual share in such reports; 25 of the top 62 were from Louisville and 19 were from the Lexington area. Other givers included former Lt. Gov. Crit Luallen, who introduced Coleman at her announcement. “Women tend to coalesce around a female candidate because we haven’t had the same representation,” Luallen told me.

The crowds at Adkins’ Lexington announcement and Frankfort fund-raiser had plenty of women, but skewed older than Coleman’s crowd, and probably more rural. The most common rationale they gave me in interviews was that he can win in the fall. “You can’t win in Kentucky unless you’re somewhere in the middle or right-middle,” said former state Rep. Cluster Howard of Jackson.

Many Democrats hope Coleman and Adkins can avoid attacks that will create bad blood and division, but Adam Edelen, the liberal who ran third in the 2019 primary with Adkins and Beshear (who has indicated he will stay neutral in the primary), said the give and take in that contest “made Andy a better candidate.” Edelen looks forward to “a humdinger of a race” that will energize Democrats dispirited over their party’s decline in the Donald Trump era. (He said he doesn’t expect to support a candidate in the primary because of his renewable-energy business interests.)

“A tough race shouldn’t hurt a minority party,” Edelen said. “I think the Democratic Party doesn’t need unity, it needs energy . . . and I think we’re gonna get it.”