“He noticed it,” recalls McKnight. “And it is like, ‘oh, no, you are leaving purchases.“” Beshear presented Kara to her daughter, Lila, now 15, which they had brought. “And it was as if they were in Walmart. They have this black trash bag and she smiles in one ear to the other. And I am like, Oh my God, that’s all.
McKnight tries to stay out of facebook. “But I am sort of angry fighting,” she says. “People see this D next to its name, and, you know, this hatred starts just. I’m like, you don’t understand man. You don’t do it.
It could as well be a Beshear campaign line. He is deacon at the Christian Church Beargrass in Louisville, and he likes to quote the scriptures, regularly calling his voters “children of God” and relies hard on the parable of Jesus and the good Samaritan. “From time to time, after some of his public addresses, I will send him an SMS:” He was a great sermon, governor “, explains his close friend Rob Shrader, Minister of Beargrass. But as devotee as Beshear, I note an equally fervent faith in the power of pragmatism. He boasts of conducting the regulations in Kentucky: “We are going to operate a business more quickly than any other state.” He is fascinated by entrepreneurs and invites them to his podcast (so far, the CEO of Mark Cuban and Pinterest Bill Ready). “I have a real interest in what others do and how they succeed,” he says. “I have always been more pragmatic than political. I got there in it TO DO Things. And it is much more important for me than if I score as many points with this group or as many points with another. »»
For example, here is something he will tell you without a moment of hesitation: “Trump’s FEMA operation in the field in Kentucky is the best I have ever seen.”
Beshear does not talk much about Donald Trump. “Five and a half years for the governor, people almost never evoke the president,” he said with satisfaction, as if it was a problem that he was solved. What he does is deplore the state of American politics. “We do not allow the national division to separate us,” he assured a host of local business leaders at Louisville Slugger Museum, his podium well located in the shade of the huge baseball bat of the museum. Then, in a tent erected on a suburban area where a children’s hospital would be built: “While we get up, some of our leaders at DC threaten to leave around 16 million Americans without health care.” He referred to the bill on the policy led by the Republicans approved by Trump, which he likes to call “the bill anything”. (“I have never seen the Congress do something so insensitive and so cruel to so many Americans,” he said in July after having adopted the Senate.) I could barely hear it in this area during the roar of the summer of the crops, but he raised his voice to deliver his line of applause: “Let me say in my Kentucky accent, that does not.”
Emphasis is not a performance. Beshear is a native son of Kentucky, born and raised in Lexington, and his father, Steve Beshear, was also governor of Kentucky, from 2007 to 2015. His mother, Jane, worked as a school teacher, accountant and real estate agent at different times in his life. A large part of whom he is their own, allows Beshear, and it is true that his kindness of the South, his easily facilitated hospitality, has a qualified air. “They are people of strong values,” explains Beshear. “Now they have very high expectations and can sometimes be extremely critical.”
“The 2% thing is a perfect example,” says Brittainy. Californian by birth, 46 years old, she is as straight in his turnover as him; They met when the two worked in DC, Beshear as a young lawyer, in Britain in marketing. (“In Cantina Marina because all the big love stories start in a Mexican restaurant,” says Beshear.)
The governor explains that he was returning from school with 98% on a test. “And my father thought he was joking but he always had the same answer:” What happened to the other 2%? ” “Tiny break. “It makes you endeavor of this next piece,” he says. “Even the things I thought I was horrible when I was a child helped me getting older.”
Beshear was raised alongside his older brother, Jeffrey, now an equine veterinarian in Virginia. “The two were very intelligent, very competitive, very voluntary,” recalls Steve Beshear, 80. “Our work was to shape and direct all of this. So we have established high standards and objectives.” He remembers how adolescent Andy became his “acolyte” when he ran as a democratic candidate to overthrow the senator of Kentucky Mitchonll in 1996. “He led me all summer and saw the ins and outs of what a campaign is,” said Steve. “He also experienced what it is to lose, what, I think, is a precious experience.”
After the university and the law faculty, and after he and Britainy married and moved to Louisville, the young Beshear joined his father’s campaign for the governor. “I played a year and a half of free legal work,” jokes Andy.
“And we were the hotel,” says Brittainy.
“I went to bed with them because it didn’t cost anything,” recalls Steve. “I have never been rich independently and so I could not make big checks, like so many people these days can do. And so we had to be frugal. ” The elder Beshear won this election and was governor until 2015. Andy then resumed his father’s work only four years after Beshear canceled him. (“In a way, in this office on his father’s chest tails”, this is how the republican and native commentator of Kentucky Scott Jennings said it last year when Beshear was considered the package of Kamala Harris.)
“Kentucky is a very traditional state,” explains the writer Chris Offutt, who grew up in the mining country of the Appalachians of Kentucky. “Many, many, many sons do what their fathers have done. So this tradition is there. ” Nepotism is not the hardest criticism of Beshear; It is that his compassion, his humility and his faith in pragmatism have a silent effect. Is it exciting enough to be a national figure? Can it rally younger voters? Self-depreciation can be a lost art, but master it does not make you viral on Tiktok.
