Beshear becomes Harris’s top attack dog against Vance

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) has become the top attack dog for Vice President Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, against GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), ripping his regional rival as a “phony” and not “one of us.”

The barbs between Beshear and Vance, a rising GOP star recently chosen as former President Trump’s running mate, come amid chatter about who could become Harris’s vice presidential choice.

Beshear and Vance are from neighboring states, and their sparring centered on who is a real representative of Appalachia, a geographic area centered on the Appalachian Mountains that is a focus of much political and cultural history and mythmaking. 

Asked on MSNBC whether he’s open to being Harris’s running mate, the Kentucky governor suggested he’d “at least listen” to such a call — then went to bat. 

“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear told the network. 

Vance responded by calling it “very weird” for Beshear to critique his origin story, Politico reported, claiming the Democrat “inherited the governorship from his father.” 

Beshear, the son of former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D), hit back again on CNN, poking at the Ohio senator’s prior criticism of Trump and accusing him of “grasping for straws” in his swings against Harris and other Democrats. He also took a shot at Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which details the senator’s Middletown, Ohio, upbringing. 

In a statement to The Hill, Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk stressed that Vance “grew up spending his summers in Appalachia and came from a poor family” while arguing Beshear “grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth thanks to his politician/lawyer daddy.”

The back-and-forth comes as Beshear is seen as one of the top candidates to join Harris’s ticket, along with Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D) and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), with advocates pointing to the fact that he represents a state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in both 2016 and 2020 as a core reason to choose him.

Beshear’s national profile started to rise after he won his reelection bid last year. Since then, he has been frequently spoken about as one of the party’s future stars.

“It’s not shocking that he would end up on a VP shortlist,” said Kentucky-based Democratic strategist Crimson MacDonald, the former chair of the Democratic Party in Campbell County, which she described as a “linchpin county” for Beshear’s first gubernatorial win. “It’s an obvious evolution.”

Beshear would offer the Democratic ticket “a very strong dichotomy against JD Vance,” particularly given their Appalachian roots, she argued. 

Beshear flipped the governorship blue in 2019, then scored a triumphant reelection win this past November, when he beat back a challenge from Trump-backed Daniel Cameron, himself seen as a budding star in the GOP. And while Biden has suffered dismal approval ratings in the Bluegrass State, Beshear has been ranked one of the most popular governors in the nation.

That could make him an attractive potential running mate for Harris as she seeks to pull support from the middle of a starkly polarized electorate. 

Vance, a first-term senator and former Trump critic who jumped to the national stage with the success of his memoir, brings a younger perspective and loyal voice to Trump’s ticket, though his state is already an easy win for Trump.

The former president selected Vance before the shake-up across the aisle, briefly teeing up a high-voltage, Vance-Harris showdown. Now, Harris will want to pick a running mate who can parry Vance in her stead.

“With JD Vance being next door in Ohio, and they’ve already had a little spat, that might be sort of interesting to sort of see how that actually plays out. I think that Beshear might be a perfect foil to JD Vance,” said Dewey Clayton, a political science professor at the University of Louisville.

But stepping into the spotlight to strike at Vance was “somewhat surprising” for the governor, who has generally kept a relatively small national profile despite his growing clout, Clayton said. It’s a possible sign that he’s gearing up for a bigger move.

“Oftentimes, the top of the ticket cannot have that sort of demeanor, and they leave that to the vice president to be the attack dog,” Clayton said. “So maybe he’s realizing that he’s going to have to do a little bit of that. Maybe he was doing a little auditioning.”

It’s in Beshear’s interest to “to pick a little political slap fight with JD Vance and play to the home crowd of Kentucky while taking a little shot at Ohio,” Buckeye State-based GOP strategist Mark Weaver said. 

But observers are hesitant to suggest Harris would pick Beshear over a battleground-state candidate such as Kelly or Shapiro, and reports conflict over whether he’s really in contention for her vice presidential pick.

The Hill reported earlier that Beshear was missing from a list of Democrats being vetted by the Harris campaign, and he told CNN on Monday that he hadn’t received the call. But ABC News reported Tuesday that he was asked to submit materials.

Either way, Harris is on a tight schedule to make her selection, with just a month to go before the Democrats’ convention in Chicago and a little more than 100 days until Election Day. 

“Momentum is on our side when it comes to our vice presidential nominee,” Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said. “However, for the sake of continuing to build and expand on our coalition, I think the sooner she makes a decision, I think the better.”