Gov. Andy Beshear budgeted $81k on Europe trip. Kentucky Republicans say that’s too much
Gov. Andy Beshear’s travel expenses for a recent trip to Europe, where he took the stage at the World Economic Forum and met with Spanish business leaders, have received increased scrutiny this week.
Criticism of Beshear’s office having a budget of about $81,000 for the trip proliferated among Republicans in Kentucky and elsewhere after Rep. T.J. Roberts, R-Burlington, posted travel records for the governor’s late January trip that he’d obtained via open records request.
Roberts shared the complete records with the Herald-Leader.
“The median income in Kentucky is just under $35,000 a year. But that didn’t stop Beshear from blowing more than double that on just two international trips designed to position him for a presidential run,” Roberts wrote on social media site X.
In a Wednesday post that caught traction on X, which was purchased more than two years ago by billionaire Republican donor Elon Musk, the Republican Party of Kentucky joined in on the criticism. Its words were re-posted by 2,500 users.
Beshear framed the criticism as a petty fixation on Roberts’ part.
“There’s a new freshman Republican out there that seems pretty focused on me. He’s filed a whole lot of bills that deal with me,” Beshear said when asked about the criticism.
“He must think about me a lot; I don’t think about him at all”
Indeed, Roberts has filed multiple bills aimed at the governor’s powers.
One bill, House Bill 317, would require approval from the state treasurer for a governor to travel out of state using public dollars.
The first-term lawmaker has gone hard at Beshear in various posts about the governor’s travel. In one, he called Beshear a “childish, power-hungry swamp rat who can’t be trusted with a dime of other people’s money.”
Roberts has also used the occasion to fund-raise. In a response video to the governor’s comments, he asked voters to “join the fight against Andy Beshear’s shameful corruption” by donating to his political campaign.
Another such bill of Roberts’ received the priority designation of House Bill 2, a piece of legislation that would allow Kentuckians to sue Beshear over his interpretation of a bill that would eliminate the sales and use tax on gold and silver.
Beshear is one of several Democrats seen as jockeying for position in the long run-up to the 2028 Democratic presidential primary. The governor is term-limited and can’t run again for his current office in 2027. He has said he’s not interested in running for U.S. Senate in 2026, when the seat currently held by Sen. Mitch McConnell is on the ballot again.
The purpose of Beshear’s trip to Europe was two-fold.
The first was to meet with Spanish business leaders, including executives at Acerinox, the parent company of North American Stainless, which employs more than 1,600 people in Carroll County.
The second was to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Beshear was invited to present on panels, including alongside Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Unlike Kentucky, Arkansas has a law restricting the release of records including the governor’s travel logs and the cost of individual trips. The Arkansas legislature passed that law in 2023 at Sanders’ urging.
Approved out-of-state travel spending requests contained in the open records request material shared with Roberts from Beshear’s office show the amounts budgeted for the trip to Europe, where he was joined by First Lady Britainy Beshear, Cabinet for Economic Development Secretary Jeff Noel, Deputy Chief of Staff Coulter Minix and special advisor Scottie Ellis.
Hotels, meals and other expenses in Spain for the five of them totaled $14,450.
In Davos, where dozens of Fortune 100 CEOs and leaders from more than 100 national governments gathered, costs were higher. Four nights of hotel expenses alone were $32,000 and the group had a budget of $7,500 for meals. The total cost for that leg of the trip was $44,400.
Airfare for five different people to and from their European destinations cost $22,000.
Noel was in Europe for eight days, and the rest of the group was there for seven.
Roberts hasn’t been the only Republican sounding the alarm on these expenses.
“So let’s get this straight: Ky taxpayers just subsidized a luxury trip to Europe for (Andy Beshear), the first lady, and their staff,” the Republican Party of Kentucky posted to social media. “Ky families deserve better than this.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 3:49 PM.
