Ex-coach Coleman campaigns like she's 'down two with a minute to go.'
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Jacqueline Coleman says a recent poll that had Andy Beshear leading Matt Bevin by nine points in the governor's race won't affect how Team Beshear campaigns between now and election day.
"The polls make you feel good, but they won't change how hard we're working," said Coleman, Beshear's running mate. They're topping the Democratic ticket.
"As a basketball coach, I always play like I'm down two with a minute to go," she said.
The Hart Research poll had Beshear beating Bevin, a Republican, 48-39 among likely voters. The survey was conducted Aug. 19-22.
The spread matched a Democratic Governor's Association poll.
"We're not going to be outworked," said Coleman.
Beshear, who lives in Louisville, is the outgoing attorney general. Coleman, a Mercer countian, is assistant principal at Nelson County High School and a former high school history teacher and girls' basketball coach.
"When I was a history teacher, my favorite thing to teach was the era when the labor movement started because it really gave average, everyday Kentuckians and Americans a voice," she said before today's Paducah Labor Day parade.
She and her spouse, Chris O'Bryan, rode in a green Polaris ATV escorted by blue-shirted members of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 184.
From Paducah, Coleman was scheduled to head to Labor Day festivities in Owensboro and Bowling Green. Owensboro is about 130 miles east of Paducah; Bowling Green is 20 miles farther away.
Her driver, Brennen Amonett of Bowling Green, promised not to break the speed limit chauffeuring his candidate on her appointed rounds.
"Labor Day is so important to Kentuckians and Americans because it is a celebration of the people who built this country," Coleman said.
More than a few Democrats are worried about the Trump factor Nov. 5. Trump, who carried Kentucky with 62.5 percent of the vote, is big for Bevin.
But when Donald Trump Jr. stumped for Bevin in Pikeville last week, he attracted a surprisingly small crowd.
Coleman thinks the sparse turnout reflected more negatively on Bevin than on the president. "It was more of an indictment of Gov. Bevin's failure of leadership than of any connection to anyone else."
She added, "If you’ve been a governor four years, and you can't run on your record, and you have to lean on other people, that’s pretty telling about the kind of leadership that you’ve given this state and shows exactly why we need a new governor."
Coleman said she and Beshear are "committed to meeting every Kentuckian where they are and lifting up the voices of all Kentuckians across the state."
She said Team Beshear is "running on kitchen table issues to help everyday Kentuckians with the challenges that we face--that hit us all in the pocketbook and that give us all anxieties.
"That’s where this campaign is. I don't know what the other side plans to do."
Bevin was elected in 2015 on a ticket with Jenean Hampton, a tea party Republican favorite. He dropped her this year for GOP state Sen. Ralph Alvarado.
The Kentucky State AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed the Beshear-Coleman ticket right after they won the May Democratic primary.