As Democrats mull messaging on trans rights, KY’s Andy Beshear boasts pro-LGBTQ bonafides
In the wake of stinging electoral losses in 2024, many Democrats across the country are wringing their hands over how to message around LGBTQ issues.
But not Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
He thinks Democrats need to clearly stand by LGBTQ people, including the transgender community.
“As a Democrat, stand up for what you believe in,” Beshear said in a recent podcast interview. “Stand up for protecting people… We’ve got to show people that you can stand up for your principles, while at the same time, being there every single day for every working family, regardless of their politics.”
Beshear landed the mid-March interview with MeidasTouch, a progressive podcast that ranks as one of the nation’s most popular, in part because of his his comments on gay and trans rights — a topic that Democrats across the nation have been wondering how to talk to voters about since the 2024 elections saw Republicans win a “trifecta” in the presidency, House and Senate.
President Donald Trump made it a marquee issue near the end of his successful 2024 campaign against former vice president Kamala Harris. A much-discussed Trump ad ran on the slogan “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The other factor is Beshear is widely seen as one of about a dozen Democrats considering a run for president in 2028 at a time when the party has yet to coalesce around a flag-bearer.
In fact, Beshear’s most-discussed comments on the issue came when he criticized fellow 2028 potential candidate Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The California governor shook up the party when he said flatly that transgender athletes’ participation in women’s athletics was “deeply unfair” in an episode of his new podcast earlier this month.
The Bluegrass State governor did not agree. Beshear brought up the lone example of a transgender athlete in Kentucky: a middle school girl who started a field hockey team in order to make friends. His 2022 veto of a trans women sports ban was overriden by the GOP-dominated legislature.
“I mean, surely, we can see some humanity and some different perspectives in this overall debate that’s going on right now,” Beshear told reporters in Washington.
This is, to some, novel coming from a red state governor.
For Kentucky Democratic Party Executive Director Morgan Eaves, Beshear is showing that Democrats can stick to their values but appeal more broadly by moderating the message. She cited the governor’s penchant for quoting scripture when he talks about accepting members of the LGBTQ community.
“By moderating his message on social issues and really couching it in his faith, he’s reaching not only those communities we want to protect and advocate for, but he’s reaching out to those people who may have been turned off from a message like that before,” Eaves said. “We don’t have to really radicalize this message of acceptance to really get through to people. Everyone wants to be accepted whether they’re gay, straight or otherwise.”
Eaves, who worked under the governor for about two-and-a-half years during his first term, said that an attitude of acceptance applies to all Beshear’s governing decisions.
“He has been a great example since the beginning of his first term and first role as (Kentucky attorney general) in that he really takes a moderate stance to everything, and he truly weighs whether every policy is going to help people or to hurt people,” Eaves said.
National Democrats are still finding their footing on this issue. The lone trans representative in Congress, Rep. Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, warned her colleagues against harsh rhetoric that could be seen as negative for trans people but also against “excommunicating” people who don’t share the mainstream party view on issues like transgender participation in women’s sports.
The public’s views on transgender women’s participation in sports appear to be shifting away from the once-orthodox Democratic consensus.
According to Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans support requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth (66%) and banning gender-affirming care for minors (56%). Both of those marks are about nine percentage points higher than they were in 2022.
Trump inflated those numbers in a recent press availability, but hammered home the GOP belief that they’re political winners for the red team.
“I tell the Republicans, I said, ‘Don’t ‘bring that subject up because there is no election right now. But about a week before the election, bring it up because you can’t lose.’”
Beshear disagrees, telling the MeidasTouch podcast listeners that Democrats are taking the wrong lesson from Trump’s 2024 win.
“I think what many Democrats are doing is misreading the last election,” he said. “They’re seeing that last ad that was played and thinking that the last moveable voters voted on that anti-trans issue; I don’t think that they did.
“I think what Donald Trump convinced them is that is that his opponent was distracted by other issues while he was focused on prices and the economy.”
Beshear for president in 2028?
Beshear has been relatively consistent in his stance on LGBTQ issues. It would be hard to argue that in 2020 there was any apparent political boost in taking a photo with drag queens in mock-catholic regalia to start his first gubernatorial term — but he did it anyway, and said he would “absolutely take that picture again.”
He’s emphasized that same spirit of rowing against what many perceived to be a political tide when he vetoed a 2023 bill banning gender-affirming medical care for Kentucky minors during his reelection year. The Republican Party of Kentucky predicted it would be his downfall and his opponent made a major issue of it; Beshear ended up winning by five percentage points.
More recently, the governor made waves on social media for his comments backing LGBTQ people “in my Kentucky accent.”
While support for those GOP-backed proposals Beshear has criticized is growing, they’re still unpopular among Democrats — and perhaps even more so among Democrats who will show up to vote in presidential primaries.
The same Pew Research survey found that 45% of Democrats support banning trans women from women’s sports, only 35% support banning gender-affirming care for minors and a mere 25% support requiring trans people to use the bathroom corresponding to their sex assigned at birth.
State House GOP Floor Leader Steven Rudy, R-Paducah, said he thinks the audience for Beshear’s comments is obvious.
“I would assume clearly he’s doing it to cater to the base of the Democrat primary voter in the presidential election,” Rudy told the Herald-Leader. “It’s not a reflection of Kentucky, and he can say ‘it ain’t his Kentucky,’ I don’t know what he thinks his Kentucky is, but it ain’t that.”
Rudy called this year’s House Bill 495 — the repeal of a Beshear-signed executive order restricting conversion therapy and the banning of Medicaid from funding any gender-affirming medicine or surgeries for transgender adults — a “no-brainer” for Kentucky. But he said he thinks another population might support taxpayer funds funding such care.
“The one group that might be for it is a Democrat primary voter in a presidential election, and I just assume that’s what Beshear’s motivation is,” Rudy said.
It might be working as Rudy thinks he intends it.
Joshua A. Cohen, who runs a popular progressive Substack publication under the name “Ettingermentum,” listed Beshear as the No. 5 option for an early 2028 Democratic presidential nomination “power ranking.”
Part of Beshear’s appeal, he told the Herald-Leader, is that he bucks the trend of red state Democrats focusing on moderation, calling back to former Montana governor Steve Bullock, for whom Beshear’s top political strategist worked.
“Usually people in those positions are standard-bearers for the importance of moderation, but Beshear is doing the exact opposite by using the credibility he has to say that (Democrats) should stand by their values,” Cohen wrote. “Since the discussion is pretty narrowly focused on winning, he gets to tell the base what it wants to hear with a degree of credibility that an electorally unaccomplished person like Newsom doesn’t have.”
Part of Beshear’s entry into the overall messaging discussions in the party might be out of necessity, Cohen added.
Unlike blue or purple state governors, like Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro or Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Beshear can’t make too significant of an imprint on state policy through legislative work; the GOP-dominated General Assembly has overridden nearly every one of his vetoes since 2020.
“He’s not in a position to do much of anything, so he can benefit by coming in on the side of more popular positions with the base without having to risk any blowback at home or for future statewide prospects,” Cohen said.
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
