Road to 2028: Andy Beshear slams ‘arrogant’ JD Vance in his native Ohio
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Road to 2028: Gov. Andy Beshear’s political future
Gov. Andy Beshear is increasingly in the spotlight as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. The Herald-Leader believes Kentuckians should know what he is saying and doing, where he is traveling and what is being said nationally about the two-term governor.
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Editor’s Note: Gov. Andy Beshear is increasingly in the spotlight as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. The Herald-Leader believes Kentuckians should know what he is saying and doing, where he is traveling and what is being said nationally about the two-term governor. To keep the commonwealth updated, our journalists will publish a periodic round-up of the latest news and headlines about Beshear.
Andy Beshear had a few words to say about Vice President JD Vance in Butler County, Ohio, where Vance was born and raised.
Over the weekend, Kentucky’s Democratic governor attended a local Democratic Party gala in the Cincinnati suburb, according to reporting from the New York Times.
Beshear told Democrats that Vance, who served as one of Ohio’s U.S. senators for just over two years before becoming the nation’s No. 2 official, that Vance “burns me up.”
“He wrote an entire book that trafficked his tired stereotypes about the people in my state, calling the people who mined the coal that powered the industrial revolution, helped us to win two world wars, he called them lazy,” Beshear said, according to a video in a social media post. “He said that addiction is the fault of the people struggling not the opioid companies that flooded our communities with thousands of pills for every individual.”
Beshear was referencing Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir about his childhood in Kentucky and Ohio. While Vance was primarily raised in Ohio, he has represented himself as a product of Appalachia from his visits to family in rural Eastern Kentucky.
That’s another thing Beshear took issue with, and has previously taken issue with, during his speech.
“Part of why I’m here is because this is where JD Vance is actually from,” Beshear said, according to the Times. “Instead of rural Kentucky, where he pretends to be from.”
Beshear made his message crystal clear, even before his Ohio visit.
“JD Vance got rich insulting the people of Appalachia,” Beshear said on social media. “And though he pretends he’s from Kentucky, he’s actually from Butler County, Ohio — where I’ll be on Saturday night in a room full of fired-up Democrats.”
The rivalry between Beshear and Vance isn’t new — and it’s probably not going away anytime soon.
Ahead of Beshear’s speech, Vance’s spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk told ABC News that, “Every time Andy Beshear attacks the Vice President to try to get himself publicity, he ends up humiliating himself in the process, but maybe that’s something he’s into?”
Beshear and Vance are both seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates for their respective parties, with the feud between the two men starting during the 2024 general election cycle. Beshear’s weekend comments are consistent with criticisms of Vance’s origin story, in which Beshear has often used the phrase “he ain’t from here.”
Neither have committed to a 2028 presidential campaign yet. But Beshear has signaled interest and made it known to Ohio Democrats, who he said deserved better than Vance as a senator and vice president, according to the New York Times.
He also added Vance is “the most arrogant politician I have ever seen” and vowed to do everthing he can to stop Vance from winning the next presidential election.
“There is no one who will work harder, no matter what I am doing next year, to beat JD Vance in 2028,” Beshear said.
Abortion access, Mountain Dew & more
Beshear and Vance have fought about a number of things, including abortion access and soda preferences.
Beshear, who was briefly a contender to become Kamala Harris’ running mate, criticized Vance over his support for abortion restrictions. Previously, Beshear campaigned on adding more exceptions to Kentucky’s strict abortion ban during the 2023 gubernatorial election and has positioned himself as an ally to abortion rights advocates.
He caught heat from Republicans, though, after an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where Beshear commented on Vance calling pregnancies resulting from rape “inconveniences” in 2021.
“’Inconvenience’ is traffic. I mean, it’s — make him go through this,” Beshear told MSNBC host Mika Brezinski. “It is someone being violated, someone being harmed, and then telling them that they don’t have options after that. That fails any test of decency, of humanity.”
A widely circulated clip of Beshear’s answer that cut off the words “make him go through this” led to Vance and Republicans accusing Beshear of advocating for someone in Vance’s family to be raped.
“What the hell is this?” Vance asked in a post to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “Why is (Beshear) wishing that a member of my family would get raped?!? What a disgusting person.”
Beshear later clarified his comments when he was asked if he was suggesting in his comments that he wanted a member of Vance’s family be raped, to which Beshear said, “of course not.”
“Obviously, I’d never wish harm on anyone,” Beshear said. “It’s just, again, deflection, trying to make himself and Donald Trump the victims.”
The two have also fought over soda — specifically, the diet version of Mountain Dew.
Vance mentioned drinking the yellow soft drink in front of a crowd of supporters in 2024, joking that Democrats might call a person who enjoys the beverage “racist.” Beshear later said in an interview with CNN that Ale-8-One was the “true soda of Kentuckians.”
“What was weird was (Vance) joking about racism today and then talking about Diet Mountain Dew,” Beshear said. “Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew? But in all seriousness, he ain’t from here. He is not from Kentucky.”
After those comments, Beshear brought a bottle of the soda to one of his weekly Team Kentucky press conferences and issued a formal apology to the beverage.
“To Diet Mountain Dew, I’m very sorry, didn’t mean to say negative things about you,” Beshear said.
