Watch it Dems: Here comes the 'Bevin Sweep,' with Trump blocking.
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Back in the 60's, when Vince Lombardi coached Green Bay, enemy defenses always knew the Packer Sweep was coming.
The problem was, they usually couldn't stop the steamroller. The Lombardi-led Packers had a trio of NFL titles and a pair of Super Bowl trophies to prove it.
The sweep was the legendary Lombardi's signature play. It featured quarterback Bart Starr handing off to halfback Paul Hornung, the pride of old Louisville Flaget. Fullback Jim Taylor helped block for Hornung.
The Republicans are counting on a Matt Bevin Sweep, with the governor lugging the pigskin and Trump running interference.
Vice President Mike Pence was in Lexington Friday for a Bevin fundraiser. Pence was Jim Grabowski, Taylor's understudy, in what amounted to a preseason game. When it counts, Trump almost certainly will be a starter for Bevin as Jim Taylor.
“I am here not only to give our support,” the Lexington Herald-Leader's Daniel Desrochers quoted Pence. “But I bring the full and total endorsement of the 45th president of the United States, President Donald Trump."
In style and substance, Bevin is Kentucky's proto-Trump. Both are thin-skinned and narcissistic. Both are challenged in the veracity department. Both appeal to prejudice. Both despise unions and pursue policies coldly calculated to enrich already rich folks like them.
"Bevin has been a frequent visitor to Washington D.C. since Trump took office, going to conservative events and sitting on White House roundtables on criminal justice reform and the opioid epidemic," Desrochers wrote. "He counts Pence, the former governor of Indiana, among his friends."
The scribe quoted Bevin: "Our Vice President Mike Pence is a guy who is true to his core. This is a guy who respects God and country.”
Like Bevin and Trump, Pence also tries to sucker voters with phony patriotism and he, too, acts like "GOP" stands for "God's Own Party." All three are union busters who think rich people shouldn't have to pay their fair share of taxes and that government isn't obliged to help people who need help.
At the same time, the sanctimonious Pence is no slouch at Trump-Bevin-style pandering. Like them and almost all Republicans these days, he's a pro at campaigning on the social issues--what one of my union buddies calls "the Three G's--God, guns and gays."
The social issues con job has been working on a lot of blue-collar white folks for years.
The three main contenders for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination -- House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, Attorney Gen. Andy Beshear and former auditor Adam Edelen -- surely know they have to get past Trump as a blocker to tackle Bevin. But finesse is the way to do it, says a state-level Democratic activist. More from him in a minute.
"Nothing can cover up Bevin's record of attacking public education, health care and our working families," Adkins said in a statement for the state AFL-CIO today.
"Bevin is charging thousands of dollars for a ticket [to his fundraiser], and the special interest lobbyists are more than happy to pay--as long as they get their way in Frankfort," said Edelen in a fundraising email his campaign put out Thursday.
There were no cheap seats for the Mike and Matt show; general admission tickets went for a grand. A donor could be a sponsor, too, for forking over another thou.
“This state cannot survive another four years of [Bevin]," Desrochers quoted Beshear in an earlier story.
Ben Self, Kentucky Democratic party chair, lit into Bevin and Pence -- but conspicuously not Trump -- in a Friday news release: "As the least popular Governor in the Country, it is not a surprise that Bevin would call upon his rich and powerful friends to try to help him out. After they leave Lexington today, they’re off to a remote luxury resort for a secretive retreat with the American Enterprise Institute to rub elbows with some of the most powerful lobbyists in the country.
"As Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence’s hateful agenda cost his state millions in lost business. He also oversaw one of the worst outbreaks of Hepatitis A in the nation as governor, just like the one we are experiencing now under Bevin. They’re two peas in a pod, and neither one of them knows what is best for Kentucky.”
Bevin is indeed sagging in polls, but Kentucky is one of 17 states where Trump's approval is above 50 percent. He pocketed 62.5 percent of Kentucky's vote in 2016.
Hence, it's fine for Democrats to go after Bevin, but dangerous to trash Trump, warned the Democratic activist, who didn't want to be identified.
He doubts that the Democrat who wins the primary can make much political hay by going after Pence's boss head on. (Bevin should have no trouble besting a trio of GOP primary foes.) "Trump has a unique, cult-of-personality-like following. He is so much more to a Trump voter."
Anyway, you've got to wonder about the fund-raiser's locale. Trump lost only two Kentucky counties: Jefferson (Louisville) and Fayette (Lexington). He got clobbered in both. Bevin was blown out in both counties, too, in 2015.
Only "a couple hundred people" showed up, Desrochers wrote. But with the admission-sponsorship prices, Bevin raised a tidy sum.
The activist is a realist. While he's guardedly optimistic about the polls, he remembers polls looked good for Democrat Jack Conway in his race against Bevin going on four years ago.
So with Trump blocking, the Bevin Sweep is on the way to Kentucky, where last year's national Blue Wave was only a trickle, and where a Democrat dropped a special state Senate election last Tuesday. Even he admitted Trump was a factor in his loss.
The activist thinks his team can stop the Bevin Sweep and throw the gov for a loss, but only by playing it the way all three candidates and the state party seem to be playing it so far: by keeping the voters focused on Frankfort and Bevin, not on Washington and Trump.