One-on-one with Andy Beshear: Governor talks about COVID-19, racial injustice & more
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear hopes history will recall that in his first year in office he was “a person of action.”
No one could have envisioned when the Democrat was sworn into office last Dec. 10 as Kentucky’s 63rd governor the issues he would face and the actions he would take on them in his first year.
The coronavirus pandemic that has caused more than 2,000 deaths in Kentucky so far. Racial injustice protests across the state in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot in her Louisville apartment on March 13 when three white police officers forced entry into the apartment as part of an investigation into alleged drug dealing operations. A meltdown of the state Democratic Party in this year’s elections for Congress and the state legislature. The removal from the Capitol Rotunda of the controversial statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of slave-holding Confederate states in the Civil War
Beshear, 43, an attorney whose father, Steve Beshear, was governor from 2007 to 2015, took action on these difficult issues. For that, he has been praised and criticized, even vilified as the subject of a hanging in effigy outside his family’s residence in the Governor’s Mansion.
Beshear talked about his first year in office Tuesday in a virtual interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader. He hopes to have seven more years in office as he plans to seek re-election in 2013 to another four-year term.
How Beshear sees his first year
Beshear has focused almost exclusively on fighting COVID-19 since declaring a state of emergency in early March.
In the months before the pandemic, his early actions on other topics included restoring voting rights to more than 170,000 Kentuckians, nixing former Gov. Matt Bevin’s proposed Medicaid restrictions, and rearranging the state board of education.
Beshear said he is proud of his team’s efforts to expand coronavirus testing and obtain a three-month stockpile of 18 million pieces of personal protective equipment for health care workers.
“I hope they remember me as a person of action that saw how deadly this could be early and understood that while action can be unpopular, inaction can be truly deadly,” he said.
Beshear has been criticized and challenged in court for his restrictions, particularly closing churches in the spring and religious schools this fall.
Asked if he would have done anything differently in handling the virus, Beshear said, “It’s a hard question right now because we are still at war.
“And during this war, we have had to make tough decisions but they are battlefield decisions. We are making them in real time based on the information that we have. And when you look at addressing a pandemic for a virus that didn’t exist before, the information changes over time. Our understanding of the virus changes.”
If he had better information at the time, said Beshear, he would have promoted wearing masks sooner. He noted that many of his Healthy at Home initiatives were adopted across the country.
He added: “If I could go back in time, we would have pushed the legislature in that first session to provide the resources immediately to replace our IT system for unemployment. Because of what would come after they left and after we had to do Healthy at Home would be a level of unemployment claims we had never seen before with one of the most outdated IT systems in the country.”
But, he said, his team made every decision “with our conscience with the best information we had at the time and putting a priority on saving lives.”
Beshear acknowledged that COVID-19 has prevented his administration from tackling “a number of areas where we in Kentucky have to do better.” He rattled off domestic violence, human trafficking, child abuse, drug overdoses and problems that afflict Kentucky’s’ most vulnerable.
“We have not lost our focus on them” and “look forward to addressing those issues” he said.
Poor relationship with the legislature
In his inaugural address last Dec. 10, Beshear said he would strive for civility and unity.
He gets high marks on civility but he has little success fostering a good working relationship with the state House and Senate, which are dominated by Republicans.
GOP leaders have grumbled that Beshear has not kept them informed about his COVID-19 actions nor sought their input. They have said they intend to limit the powers of the governor to issue emergency restrictions in the 2021 Kentucky General Assembly that begins Jan. 5.
Asked if he thinks an amendment to the Kentucky Constitution would be needed for the legislature to do that, Beshear said the Kentucky Supreme Court was “pretty clear” in upholding his restrictions that the governor needs powers to address emergencies because the state has only a part-time legislature.
The court talked about the powers granted to the governor under the Constitution, he said.
“But we are in what could be the grimmest, most difficult time in this pandemic and the vaccine is right around the corner,” he said. “So to take steps in what may be the most dangerous month when we know there is an end in sight to make it less effective in fighting the virus, that’s going to cause more people to die.
“It’s reckless and it’s putting politics over the lives of the people of Kentucky. I hope when they show up, making a lot of noise, let’s take a breath, let me get on through this and afterwards, have at it. Then we can go to court or anything else.”
Pressed on why he does not have regular meetings with legislative leaders about the virus, Beshear said he had regular meetings with leaders before the virus and he is “ready, willing and able” to work with them.
Beshear said he has proven he has “a bipartisan approach” by working with Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams in coming up with procedures for this year’s elections during the virus and has worked with various Republican governors and the Trump Administration.
He said his staff has had “good discussions’ with legislative leadership on the state budget. “Hopefully, we can continue to improve on that and move forward,” he said. “But it takes two parties to work together.”
Breonna Taylor and racial injustice
Beshear said he has taken steps to make health insurance coverage more accessible, most recently by launching a marketing campaign to sign up tens of thousands of Kentuckians, especially Black people, for pandemic Medicaid and then work on transitioning them to traditional Medicaid or others forms of coverage.
Black Kentuckians make up about 8 percent of the state’s population but had about 16 or 17 percent of the coronavirus deaths at one time.
“We have shrunk now that to 12, hope to get it down to about 11 percent, and that is really being intentional,” he said.
He stressed that he is committed to signing up every Kentuckian for health care but he started with the “community that has been impacted most.”
He also said better training for police officers and teachers has been implemented.
Dismal showing for Democrats in this year’s elections
Democrats took a beating in this year’s races for state legislative races. Republicans now control the Senate 30-8 and the House 75-25.
He said elections for Democrats in Kentucky have been tough with Republican President Trump on the ballot.
Democrats need to continue to talk about health care, educations, jobs and ethics. “That’s the issues that matter most to people,” he said.
Removal of Jefferson Davis statue in Capitol
Beshear said no committee has been formed to recommend a replacement for the controversial statue because the public still is not allowed in the Capitol because of COVID-19.
He said the statue remains in storage but it appears to be headed to the historic site in Todd County. He did say relatives of Davis have offered other alternatives. He added that they recognize that the statue should not have been in the Kentucky Capitol.
Odds ‘n’ Ends
In July 2016, then-Republican Gov. Matt Bevin changed the name of the education center near the Capitol that honored former First Lady Jane Beshear, who was instrumental in its formation, to honor Gold Star military families.
Asked when the center was going to get back its original name, Beshear laughed and said, “We will be looking at that as we move into the future.” He said his mother was right in taking on that project.
Asked how many hours a week he works, Beshear said, “In this job you never stop,” but has structured his days to make time for his wife and two children.
He said he does not anticipate major changes in his staff after a year and that he plans to seek re-election.
“While COVID is probably the most important thing I will ever be asked to do professionally, I look so forward to all those other priorities and I look forward to the challenge of post-COVID economies across the United States.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 3:57 PM.
