As Cameron doubles down, Trump looms large for KY’s GOP candidates for governor.

Former president Donald Trump shook up the Kentucky political scene when he endorsed Attorney General Daniel Cameron in his run for governor in the 2023 GOP primary.

But how closely does Cameron back Trump, given the continual cycle of news surrounding the former president’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his reported refusal to turn over classified White House documents which led to an FBI search of his residence?

Although he’s currently the top law enforcement official in Kentucky, Cameron doubled down in his support for Trump amid news of the FBI search, praising Trump as a “fighter” in a post on Twitter.

“No raid at Mar-a-Lago is going to stop him from working hard for the American people,” Cameron wrote. “Folks here in Kentucky will always support someone the media despises and the left hates, because it means that person is standing up for their values.”

Does Cameron, along with the rest of the GOP candidates running for the state’s highest post, also agree with Trump’s most prominent rallying cry post-election: the false claims that he actually beat Joe Biden and that there was widespread election fraud?

Cameron and other 2023 hopefuls won’t really say one way or the other. But they also won’t acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s win.

When asked about Trump and 2020 during the Fancy Farm political picnic last weekend, Cameron stated that the election was fair in Kentucky but didn’t elaborate nationwide beyond admitting that Joe Biden is the current president.

“(The media) breathlessly report on the 2020 election. We are almost in 2023,” Cameron said. “… President Biden is the president of the United States. I don’t dispute that. What I dispute is you all continuing to breathlessly talk about it.”

In response to continued questioning from Al Cross, Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, Cameron said that “I hope at some point you get to interview Donald Trump and you can ask him all these questions.”

Trump has often aligned himself with candidates who flat-out deny the results of the 2020 election; in races since his presidential loss, his endorsement has proven helpful but not bulletproof.

Rep. Adam Koenig, R-Erlanger, a longtime House Republican who got defeated by a candidate running to his political right in the primary this May, said continuing to closely associate with Trump is still largely helpful for candidates running in a state like Kentucky.

“Obviously, you just have to look at the primaries across the country to see the benefit of being associated with Trump and having his endorsement,” Koenig said. “Time will tell what happens in the next nine months as to how far these investigations go how the elections go to see what the effects will be.”

Particularly if the investigations and revelations into Trump don’t further hamper his reputation, Koenig said it’s hard to see the association with Trump as a political negative for Cameron, at least in the primary. Having the endorsement in an already-crowded primary field, with former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft and others possibly jumping in, also helps Cameron more than it would in a two- or three-person race, Koenig said.

The former president is still a leading figure in the Republican party despite continued revelations of his conduct during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He overwhelmingly won a straw poll for the 2024 presidential nomination at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event.

“Once you seek it (an endorsement) and accept it, you’re married to it for good or bad. So you might as well lean into it,” Koenig said.

Despite continued popularity among conservatives, Trump’s national approval rating is quite low, with 61% of Americans opposing his candidacy in 2024, according to a Fox News poll conducted last month. Biden is also unpopular, with a national approval rating slightly below 40%.

Trump’s popularity in Kentucky far exceeded his national approval in 2020, though, when he beat Biden in the state by a whopping 26 percentage points.

Though Cameron generally backed Trump with his tweet in the wake of the search, a spokesperson for Cameron’s office offered no comment to a request to clarify his stance on the FBI operation.

His social media presence has become more fiery since he began his run for governor. Cameron tweeted out his speech at the historic political speaking event Fancy Farm from this weekend, which featured progressives chanting “Breonna Taylor,” the name of the 26-year-old Black woman killed by Louisville police in 2020, and emphasized how his actions have incensed liberals. His office served as the special prosecutor in the case and only found one officer involved in the shooting with endangering Taylor’s neighbors.

“Time and again I’ve stood up for our conservative values, and I’ve got the record to prove it. And ooooh it makes the liberals angry,” Cameron tweeted.

Criticism of Cameron’s handling of the Taylor case has only increased since last week when the U.S. Department of Justice charged four current and former Louisville Metro Police Department officers in connection with Taylor’s killing.

AG candidate Coleman calls for transparency

The only current GOP nominee to replace Cameron as attorney general, Russell Coleman, has also leaned into his Trump bonafides. The former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky has put his association with Trump at the forefront of his advertising materials, touting how he was “handpicked” by Trump in his previous post.

In a statement released about the FBI search of Trump’s home, Coleman’s messaging was focused on the reputation of the FBI in a call for transparency from the agency regarding its reasons for the search.

“The reality is half the country will look on this with a jaundiced eye and transparency would help reassure the American people. We need confidence in institutions, and some transparency here would help restore that. All we know is there’s a dispute over paperwork, which to many Americans would make a raid seem like politically motivated overkill,” Coleman said.

Coleman shares a professional history with Cameron. Both served as legal counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell and worked at the Louisville law firm Frost Brown Todd, where Coleman is currently a partner.

What are the other governor candidates saying?

Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles, who is also running for the GOP nomination for governor in 2023, was even more mum on the subject of the 2020 election than Cameron.

“Here in Kentucky, the president won big,” Quarles said of Trump’s near-26 point win in the state. When pressed, he would not comment on the national result, only mentioning that “any voter fraud is too much voter fraud.”

A project from the Associated Press found less than 475 instances of potential voter fraud among more than 25 million votes cast in that election. In 2020, more than 150 million votes total were cast.

Quarles did laud election laws passed in a bipartisan manner and supported by Kentucky’s chief elections officer Secretary of State Michael Adams as well as Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

Adams has acknowledged that Biden won the election.

“There were mistakes made. I don’t think any of those mistakes changed who won the election, but I do think there are some improvements to the process that can be made with respect to enhancing the public confidence in voter integrity,” Adams said.

Unlike Quarles, Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, spoke ill of the reforms shepherded by Adams, touting her “no” vote on the legislation. Maddox has thus far differentiated her 2023 campaign for governor by sharply criticizing the other GOP candidates as too moderate.

She stopped short of saying Trump actually won the election as it was conducted, but asserted that he would have if not for the increased use of mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maddox, similarly to Cameron, responded to the FBI search of Trump’s residence. Her campaign sent a fundraising email the day after news of the event broke

Saying that she would stand up for “the rule of law,” accusing unnamed dark forces within Washington of unfairly attacking Trump, Maddox asked those on her mailing list to contribute to her campaign.

Like Cameron and Quarles, 2023 governor hopeful and current Auditor Mike Harmon distanced himself from other states’ results in the election. He would not say whether the election was fairly decided.

“Any time that controls are removed or lessened, the probability of fraud goes up dramatically,” Harmon said. “... whether it had the full influence to change those election results, I can’t say because I haven’t looked at the data.”

One exception is Eric Deters, a former attorney and conservative firebrand who is running as a Republican. He echoes Trump’s stance that votes were somehow “manufactured” to beat him.

Deters paid $75,000 to attend a Trump-sponsored event at the Kentucky Derby this year, which Kelly Craft also attended.