Andy Beshear touts his record and tries to remove taint of Longmeyer contribution
Recalling a year of legal action that included filing lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, cracking down on online child predators and suing the governor to block a public pension bill, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear made his case Monday why he should be the state’s next governor.
Beshear, a 41-year-old Democrat whose father, Steve Beshear, was governor form 2007 to 2015, spent much of his workday Monday talking to reporters about his third year as Kentucky’s chief law enforcement official and his plans for the office next year.
He decided not to seek another four-year term this year as attorney general and instead announced his candidacy for governor in 2019.
Beshear, during a news conference in his Capitol office, called 2018 “a good year.” He said he loves serving as attorney general but wants to be governor because “I see a state where our people are falling farther behind” with stagnant job wages and higher health care costs and an administration that is “attacking our public schools.”
Bevin, who has said he will run for re-election but has not yet filed, did not respond to a request for comment.
State Republican Party spokesman Tres Watson said Beshear is “doing everything he can to distract Kentuckians from the many scandals he allowed to plague his office while he focused his attention on turning the attorney general’s office into a political weapon to further his own political ambitions.”
He specifically referenced Tim Longmeyer, a former deputy attorney general who is serving a 70-month sentence in federal prison for accepting bribes in a kick-back scheme he orchestrated as secretary of the Personnel Cabinet under Steve Beshear. He worked three months in Andy Beshear’s office before resigning shortly before he was charged.
Longmeyer admitted that he kept part of the money from the scheme but used some of it to make illegal political contributions in the names of others to Democratic candidates he supported. He contributed $4,000 to Andy Beshear’s 2015 campaign, according to an audit by the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.
Federal authorities have said there is no evidence that Andy Beshear knew of Longmeyer’s bribery scheme prior to the charges being filed.
Andy Beshear said Monday that the audit of his 2015 campaign contributions is complete and that he will write a check to the watchdog group Common Cause of Kentucky this week to remove the taint of the Longmeyer contribution.
Beshear spokesman Terry Sebastian said the check will be for $14,302.79 to cover the $4,000 Longmeyer contribution and the balance of the Beshear campaign account.
In touting his work this year, Beshear said he has filed more opioid lawsuits than any attorney general in the nation — nine.
So far, efforts by drug manufacturers to dismiss his lawsuits have failed, he said.
“The only way to hold these out-of-state pharmaceutical companies accountable for the harm they have caused our families and communities is to haul them into our courts and make them pay for creating the crisis of our time — our opioid epidemic,” he said.
Beshear also said his office is fighting an unprecedented number of requests for rate increases by investor-owned utilities before the state Public Service Commission.
The proposed total impact of current cases before the state commission would mean a nearly $200 million annual rate increase for Kentuckians in about 90 counties, Beshear said.
Concerning child safety, Beshear said his office rescued 12 child victims as part of online predator crackdowns that led to more than 300 counts of child sexual abuse or child pornography charges against those arrested.
His office also secured a record 39 human trafficking charges and other related offenses in 2018, Beshear said. He said his office is now working 31 human trafficking cases and hopes to convince the state legislature next year to approve a bill that calls for training of truck drivers to spot human trafficking.
Beshear also said he is awaiting a decision by the Kentucky Supreme Court on his challenge of the controversial public pension law. The high court is to make some rulings Thursday but it is not certain if the pension case will be among them.
If he becomes governor next December, Beshear said, one of his first actions would be to get rid of Bevin’s plan to impose work requirements, premiums and monthly check-ins on several hundred thousand able-bodied adults enrolled in Kentucky’s $9.7 billion-a-year Medicaid program.