Diet Dew, school choice & holy water: The best Fancy Farm zingers, jabs and one-liners
Confess, Kentucky politicians.
That was the message from emcee Father Jim Sichko at the 144th-annual St. Jerome Church Fancy, who jokingly offered the priestly service to speakers at Kentucky’s most popular and storied political speaking event.
But the stage was more slander than sacrament.
The event is known for its rhetorical “roasts” as much as its slow-cooked mutton. Politicians on both sides of the aisle lived up to its reputation.
Topics of choice for Republicans: The notable absence of Gov. Andy Beshear, who is reportedly one of a handful of Democrats meeting with the vetting team of Vice President Kamala Harris in her search for a running mate; the dearth of Democrats in West Kentucky; and former president Donald Trump’s run against Harris for the White House.
Democrats were relatively few in number. Neither Beshear nor Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, who attended an event supporting cancer survivors, showed. Only House Democratic Caucus Chair Cherlynn Stevenson, D-Lexington, and First Congressional District candidate Erin Marshall spoke opposite the Republicans.
All GOP statewide elected officials except Auditor Allison Ball spoke at the event.
The majority of the Republican side of the crowd under the speaker’s tent donned bright blue “Comer” shirts for Rep. James Comer, who represents the far West Kentucky region. Much of the Democratic side wore red, the color of the Kentucky Education Association, a teacher’s union that has come out hard against the so-called “school choice” constitutional amendment on the ballot this year.
Here’s a sampling of what we heard:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
McConnell, a noted fan of Fancy Farm, did not miss the opportunity to speak. He appeared alongside his wife Elaine Chao, former cabinet official for the administrations of both Trump and George W. Bush.
The Kentucky Republican spent most of his time deriding Harris. He said the three hallmarks of her campaign were “chaos, crisis and incompetence.”
“Her new campaign slogan is, ‘We’re not going back.’ I guess she means the 10 million people she let loose in our country,” McConnell jabbed.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Cherlynn Stevenson
Stevenson used her first time on the Fancy Farm speaking stage to rail against Constitutional Amendment 2, an amendment on the ballot this November that, if approved, would allow the state to spend taxpayer money on helping fund nonpublic or charter schools.
The Lexington Democrat called Amendment 2 “public enemy No. 1 .”
She also used her allotted time to hit Republicans, too.
She joked she was “more excited than a Republican trying to take away your lunch break,” about being there, and “more ready to go than Matt Bevin’s ex-wife,” referencing a recently proposed GOP-backed bill and the former governor’s divorce, respectively.
She also jabbed at Comer, who lost a historically tight primary race to Bevin in 2015. Bevin then lost the governor’s mansion to Beshear.
“I know it’s hard watching Andy Beshear rise through the political ranks, but you have something he doesn’t: a loss to Matt Bevin,” she said.
“I’m sure you think about that 2015 race a lot, and I want to give a big shout out to those 83 Republicans (the margin of Bevin’s win) who ultimately gave us the most popular Democratic governor in the country.”
House Republican Caucus Chair Suzanne Miles, R-Owensboro
On the “yes” side of Amendment 2 was Miles, another first-time Fancy Farm speaker.
As she took the podium, she urged Stevenson not to leave so she could take confession “for all the lies you just told us.”
Miles also advocated hard for change in Kentucky’s education system and stressed the amendment would not hurt Kentucky’s public schools.
“Half of our kids in the state of Kentucky cannot read at grade level. That’s an embarrassment. A third of our kids are not proficient in math,” she said.
Former attorney general Daniel Cameron, a Trump surrogate
A familiar face graced the Fancy Farm stage, but Daniel Cameron is no longer an elected official.
After losing his gubernatorial race against Beshear in 2023, the former state attorney general Cameron appeared as a surrogate for Trump’s campaign.
Having recently formed a political action committee to help Republicans in the state, he also did not deny interest in running for another elected office in the future.
On stage, he fixed his aim mostly at Harris, deriding her record on the economy and the environment. He also made mention of progressives’ acceptance of transgender people’s identities.
“How can they expect to celebrate her as a historic figure when they can’t even tell us what a woman is,” Cameron said..
Cameron also dipped his toe into the discourse set off by Trump’s running mate’s recent comment that those on the left would claim drinking a Diet Mountain Dew is “racist.”
“The Democrat Party has gotten so weird that they want to tell you what you can drink,” Cameron said. “They’ve gone from a war on coal to a war on Diet Mountain Dew.”
Representative-elect Kim Holloway, R-Mayfield
Holloway defeated longtime incumbent Rep. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, who chairs the regionally important House Agriculture Committee. She was one of a handful of Liberty GOP candidates that defeated more traditional Republicans at the ballot box this May.
Also a Mayfield Republican, Holloway made light of her popularity among establishment Republicans.
“The word out of Frankfort is that I already have a primary for 2026, which is weird because I haven’t even gotten a chance to screw anything up yet,” she said.
This story was originally published August 3, 2024 at 7:54 PM.
