Gov. Andy Beshear’s book tour looks a lot like a soft launch for 2028.
The Kentucky Democrat hasn’t been shy about it.
“I walked off the stage in 2023 after reelection, looked at my wife and said, ’Whoo! I’ll never have to run for anything ever again.’ Sitting here today, I’m not sure that’s true,” Mr. Beshear said at an event this week in Washington alongside Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. “While that’s not any type of announcement, because that would require me to fill out paperwork, I just — I won’t leave a broken country to my kids or to our future generations.”
He’s currently pushing his new book, “Go and Do Likewise,” with the latest stop planned Wednesday in Philadelphia. The pitch: a Democrat can win in a deep-red state and still speak to a primary electorate where the activist left usually calls the shots.
He points to his 2023 reelection as proof.
Mr. Beshear beat Republican Daniel Cameron by 5 points in a state Donald Trump had carried by 26 points the year before — a gap that Mr. Beshear and his allies say shows that a pragmatic Democrat can win over voters who otherwise pull the lever for Republicans up and down the ballot.
On the stump, he backs that up with a legislative record built alongside a GOP-dominated statehouse, including Medicaid expansion, expanding pre-K pilot programs and medical cannabis.
A Beshear presidential run would also test whether a Democratic Party whose energy and money increasingly flow through the coasts is willing to turn to someone from the middle of the country instead.
Mr. Beshear would be pitching himself as the candidate who can win back the working-class and rural voters whom coastal Democrats have struggled to reach — a case built less on ideology than on the argument that his kind of politics simply performs better outside the party’s usual strongholds.
He won’t have the lane to himself.
The 2028 Democratic field is starting to take shape — former Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t closed the door on another run, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg looks likely to jump in, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York remains a constant subject of speculation about her next move.
Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois are also considered possible contenders.
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