Fighting for Points
By 
The Gray Lady deigns to take notice of the Bluegrass State!
The Republican primary on May 16 is pitting two pillars of the state’s party apparatus, Mr. Cameron and Ms. Craft, against each other, with a third, well-liked Republican, Ryan Quarles, the agricultural commissioner, acting as an amiable wild card. Polling has been scant, though the few public surveys suggest that Mr. Cameron’s once-dominant lead is shrinking.
This churning political mixture has largely frozen the party and its major supporters in place. No one wants to be on the wrong side of the Craft family, collectively one of the biggest Republican donors in the country. And few are eager to damage Mr. Cameron, with his ties to Mr. McConnell, his early endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump and what some in the party view as his potential to rise to powerful positions within the G.O.P.
Things got spicy at last night’s gubernatorial debate:
From the Herald Leader:
The two front-runners according to recent polling — Craft, the former ambassador to Canada and the United Nations, Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general — in particular traded barbs with one another on support from law enforcement, alleged ethics violations and more. There’s just two weeks until the primary, when GOP voters across Kentucky decide who among a dozen candidates is their best bet to defeat presumptive Democratic nominee and incumbent governor, Andy Beshear. Despite Kentucky’s increasingly Republican leanings, Beshear is likely to be a formidable opponent, as recent surveys have shown he is consistently one of the most popular governors in America. Deters, a suspended Northern Kentucky attorney and arguably the most far-right candidate on the stage Monday night, also jumped into the fray, lobbing insults at Craft for “playing the woman card” and the wealth of her and her husband, Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joe Craft.
The latest poll has Cameron at 30, Craft at 23, and Quarles at 14, which represented a significant improvement for Craft. I won’t hazard which of these folks is least bad, but there’s no question that the Craft camp has the ugliest ads [ed. I know Ryan Quarles and Max Wise (Craft’s running mate) personally and professionally]. The prognostications still favor Andy Beshear holding the seat.