JACKSON, Ky. – Chasing the vice presidency, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear spent Friday in Appalachian Kentucky before weekend stops at Democratic events in Iowa and Georgia, but he only alluded to his verbal tussle with Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance – whose adopted Appalachian hometown was Beshear’s final stop.
“I’ve been having quite a week, but y’all been in the news lately,” Beshear said as he began his remarks in Jackson, where he announced more funding of housing for recovery from the record floods of 2022, his all-day official business. And he left it at that, apparently knowing that opinion of Vance in Breathitt County is divided.
But at the previous stop, near Hazard, Beshear began his remarks by saying “We like each other in Kentucky. We’re all FROM here.” That was a reference to his repeated jab at Vance on Monday: “He ain’t from here.”
Vance’s grandparents lived in Jackson before migrating to Middletown, Ohio. He visited Jackson often in his youth, and owns land and a burial plot there. He told his life story and his rise to law school in Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which includes disparaging references to some Appalachian residents and expatriates.
On CNN Monday, Beshear called Vance “a phony.” Friday, he told reporters at Hazard that he didn’t know of any help Vance had given to the region. “When you have profited from a book talking about Eastern Kentucky,” he said, “I think it gives you an obligation to invest back in Eastern Kentucky.”
Later in the day, the Louisville Courier Journal quoted a woman in nearby Hazel Green saying Vance donated $10,000 for flood relief at her request. “He did not want any public praise for it,” Vanessa Treft said.
Vance didn’t come up, at least publicly, at the next stop. Democrats in the crowd at Jackson said in interviews that it was better for him to lay off. “There’s very mixed emotions” about Vance, and people don’t like personal attacks, said Tommy Noble of Jackson.
At Hazard and two other stops, Beshear referred to Vice President Kamala Harris’s consideration of him as her running mate.
“No matter where I am, I am going to get this done,” Beshear said of efforts to build new “high ground” communities in southeastern Kentucky, outside the region’s frequently flooded river and creek bottoms.
Asked if he is at a disadvantage since he is not from a swing state, Beshear made an implicit case for himself: “I think just about every successful ticket going back to 2000 did not have someone in a swing state,” he said, adding that the running mate can be “somebody who can communicate to everyone, in swing states and outside.”
Asked if he wants to be vice president, he said, “I love my current job. If this is my last political job, I will be more than satisfied and happy. As I’m honored to be considered, what I will consider in my own calculation is the way I think I can help the commonwealth the most.”
In prepared remarks at all stops, Beshear made two national points, saying the Federal Emergency Management Agency changed procedures as a result of pushback from him and other Kentuckian; and the nation has an obligation to help the depressed Appalachian coalfield because of its contributions to national prosperity and security.
“Your unwillingness to take no for an answer has helped people all across the United States of America,” he said at Hazard. At Jackson, he said “You’ve changed just about every major policy that FEMA had in place that made it so difficult” to get disaster relief. “We got FEMA going door to door. ... For the first time, we got decision-making on the ground so it didn’t go to some call center where they tried to find something else that was difficult.”
Echoing his early-week claim that Vance had called the region’s people lazy, Beshear said, “You all know that Eastern Kentucky helped build this country; that you all mined the coal that powered the industrial revolution, created the strongest middle class the world has ever seen, powered us through two world wars. This state and this country has an obligation to you, and I’m gonna make sure, no matter what I’m doing, that we repay that obligation and that we bring great jobs to Eastern Kentucky in a scale that we haven’t seen for a long time.”
That would be the years just after World War II, when there were plenty of coal-mining jobs for returning soldiers. But in 1950, the coal operators and the United Mine Workers signed a contract that cleared the way for greatly increased mechanization of underground mines, leading to fewer miners. The Appalachian coalfield has been losing population ever since, with the exception of a boom after the first Arab oil embargo. In 1950, Kentucky had 75,000 coal miners; today it has fewer than 5,000.
--30--
Comments
