FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Juggling dual crises he had no way of anticipating, Kentucky’s new governor has moved to take on deeply-rooted racial inequities as he grapples with fallout from a global pandemic and the fatal shooting of a black woman by Louisville police.
Six months into his term, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear declared his intent to expand health care coverage to every black Kentuckian, provide anti-bias and other training for police officers and increase the number of black teachers in a state largely controlled by Republicans. The initiatives reflect both his intent to spend whatever political capital he has gained in navigating the state through troubled times and to shift debate to priorities he says all Kentuckians should support on moral grounds.
They also show just how much things have changed since Beshear took office. During his successful campaign last year to oust Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, Beshear touted legalizing casino gambling, education funding and a pay raise for teachers.
The shift comes as COVID-19 spreads disproportionately among black Kentuckians, and as Louisville copes with demands for justice for Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home in March. She was shot eight times by narcotics detectives who knocked down her door while attempting to enforce a search warrant. No drugs were found.
“We have a new generation of Kentuckians that demands that we do better and we be better people,” Beshear told The Associated Press in an interview this week. “That we create a commonwealth that is just, where everyone has opportunities. Where we build that world and that state that we tell our kids that we should have. It’s time to start living up to our faith. It’s time to start living up to our values.”
Beshear moved early in his term to address health care and equity issues. Through executive action, he restored voting rights for more than 140,000 nonviolent offenders who completed their sentences. And he halted his predecessor’s efforts to impose work requirements as a condition for Medicaid health coverage.
The state’s Medicaid expansion was championed by Beshear’s father but fiercely opposed by Bevin, the governor between the Beshears. Former Gov. Steve Beshear wielded his executive authority to allow more than 400,000 people to get health benefits, many for the first time. Medicaid is a joint federal and state health care program for poor and disabled people.
Now the son wants every Kentuckian covered through private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare. Andy Beshear calls health care a basic human right and cites the virus’s disproportionate spread among black Kentuckians.
“We have a duty, having lived through this, having seen certain populations dying at double the rate that they make up the economy, to do better,” he said.
About 8% of Kentucky’s population is black. But black Kentuckians make up 15% of all COVID-19 cases and 17% of all coronavirus-related deaths, Beshear said Thursday.
Nearly 20,000 people, or nearly 6% of the state’s black population, lack health insurance. The state’s overall uninsured rate was 5.6 percent, according to the 2018 American Community Survey.
Beshear has offered few details on the plan to reach universal health coverage but said the goal is clear by focusing at the start on signing up blacks for coverage.
“When we’ve got people dying at an unacceptable rate, at twice the makeup, even more, than the population, we all ought to understand a priority of where we start in signing people up,” he said.
Early in the year, the success of Beshear’s opening months in office seemed to hinge on working with the Republican-dominated legislature to boost education funding and teachers’ pay.
That campaign stalled when the coronavirus hit. Since then, he’s steered the state through business lockdowns that are easing considerably. Then protests erupted in the state’s largest city over the deaths of Taylor and a black man in Minneapolis by police.
“You know I thought more than just about anybody coming into this job, I knew what it was,” he said. “Yet we are seeing so much history occurring in front of us in a very short time period.”
Beshear has used his bully pulpit. His virus briefs run on statewide television, and his empathetic approach has won bipartisan praise. But he’s recently come under more fire from Republicans. State GOP spokesman Mike Lonergan said Beshear’s handling of the health crisis has been “riddled by overreach, failure and hypocrisy.” Beshear says cases have gone up recently but appear to be reaching a “new plateau.”
Emphasizing issues affecting minorities could carry political risk in a mostly white, conservative state with many needs. But his advocates say it reflects Beshear’s values.
“Focusing on politics alone and what is best for him personally have been secondary to doing what is best for Kentuckians,” Raymond M. Burse, a community activist with the Louisville Branch of the NAACP. “And he will do the same to end inequities in Kentucky. He is a driven, honest, ethical, moral individual.”
The governor’s new push does have political undercurrents. He would not have achieved his narrow victory last year without overwhelming support in urban counties with significant African American populations.
Beshear has faced the most challenging first six months of a Kentucky governor in modern times, said longtime Kentucky political commentator Al Cross. He predicted the governor’s focus will be on traditional pocketbook issues in coming months.
“While there’s certainly increased concern about racial injustice … that’s not something that I expect a governor of Kentucky to win a lot of political points on,” he said. “The overarching concern of Kentuckians is probably jobs, education and health care, in that order.”
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