‘We have momentum’: KY, national Democrats are optimistic about party’s future
At a sold-out dinner kicking off the Kentucky Democratic Party’s annual convention Friday, Gov. Andy Beshear said looming federal Republican budget cuts that will impact average Americans leave a “wide open” lane for Democrats to mobilize.
Beshear, echoing a message he gave late last year after Republican President Donald Trump was elected to a second term, said his party, which has ceded significant ground to the GOP in Kentucky, increasingly needs to “focus on people’s everyday concerns,” like access to health care, jobs and the economy.
“But that doesn’t mean we have to abandon one principle we believe in,” he said. “We can be the pro-job party while still being the pro-labor and pro-environment party.”
Beshear, who has teased a presidential run in 2028, and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin spoke to a room of nearly 500 people at the Owensboro Convention Center, arguing that the Republican platform increasingly champions policies that harm middle America and marginalized groups.
“We’re here to talk about how we can come together as a country, despite everything we’re seeing out of Washington, D.C.,” which has been “non-stop anger politics,” Beshear said. “How can we meet this moment by standing up for our values?”
Friday’s event, like most political conventions, painted an optimistic picture for the Democratic party, even as Democrats maintain a historically small representation in the Kentucky General Assembly. In May, the state senate’s last remaining Eastern Kentucky Democrat switched her party registration to join the supermajority GOP, saying she no longer felt like the party represented the “issues that matter most to rural Kentuckians.”
But with record-low approval ratings for Trump — a poll from Quinnipiac College this week pegged approval at 38%, the lowest so far in his second term — Democrats say they see an opening.
“There is wind at the back of the Democratic Party right now,” Martin said. “We have momentum. We have an opportunity to talk to all those voters who voted for Trump who are now leaving him (and) to expand our coalition... and build a majority party.”
Martin and Beshear shared a buoyed vision of the party’s future: one with record investment and a revamped road map.
That includes emulating the GOP, which has an edge on campaigning across the whole country, not just in battleground states — a tactic the DNC needs to adopt for its own, Martin said.
“If we look at the conservative movement in this country, they don’t leave an inch uncovered. They organize everywhere. That’s what our party has to do,” Martin told reporters after the dinner. “We cannot be a party that’s just competing in several battleground states and a few congressional seats. Our policies are popular. We just have to get out there and give them a sense of who we are and that we’re fighting for them.
“At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as a perpetual red state, any more than there is a perpetual blue state.”
Beshear noted that several recent developments — the ripple effect of tariffs, threats under Trump’s spending bill to remove millions of people from Medicaid and the impact of potential cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, which would impact thousands of low-income Kentuckians — leave an opening for Democrats to “re-earn the faith of the American people.”
Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge added: “In the face of MAGA chaos and cruelty, in the face of the damage they’ve done to our democracy and decency, we have a moment to show up and listen.”
That includes talking to Americans who voted for Trump but have buyer’s remorse, Martin said.
“We can stand up for every principle of the Democratic Party, but let’s make sure we’re spending our time in a way that lifts every American up — Democrat, Republican or Independent,” Beshear said. “It is how we will heal this country.”
