ICYMI: GOP's "Increasingly Bitter Primary" Gets Messier and More Expensive

While GOP faces expensive intraparty brawl, Gov. Beshear's poll numbers stay strong and rising

KENTUCKY DEMOCRATIC PARTY​​​​​​​

FRANKFORT, Ky. – A new Politico article laid out the “increasingly bitter” primary that has led to over $6 million in Republican-on-Republican attack ads, with each candidate vying to be more extreme than the next. Even worse for the GOP: recent polling by Emerson College and Fox 56 show a “tightened” race with both leading candidates and their allies now hitting each other on the airwaves.

The GOP’s “brutal primary” comes on the heels of Morning Consult’s new poll today showing Governor Andy Beshear with a 63% approval rating – making him the most popular Democratic governor, and among the five most popular governors in the country. 

Read more about the increasingly messy and expensive primary here:

Politico: Republican in-fighting gets heated in the most important governor’s race in 2023

Key points: 

• “A Republican mega-donor is opening her wallet in an effort to win the Kentucky governorship — spending millions laying waste to the Republican frontrunner in an increasingly bitter primary.”
• “But the brutal primary between the two could also come at a cost…The circular firing squad now unfolding in the GOP primary is giving an already popular Democratic incumbent an opening to peel off at least a sliver of Republican voters turned off by the in-fighting.”
•  “Davison, the adviser to Craft, took a swipe at that close relationship between [Cameron and McConnell] in her statement, saying Cameron’s team was ‘having a bad morning after finding out their Mitch McConnell-groomed candidate has fallen a net 19 points over the last few weeks.’”