“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
When the votes were tabulated in Kentucky’s 2023 gubernatorial race, Daniel Cameron, the first African American ever to be nominated for governor by a major party in Kentucky, received 63 percent of the popular vote in Johnson County. There is nothing remarkable about a Republican candidate winning an election in Johnson County, but there is something remarkable about an African American winning a county where 97 percent of the population is White and less than 1 percent of the population is Black.
Cameron currently resides in Jefferson County, one of the most racially diverse counties in the state, where 21.7 percent of the population is Black and only 65.9 percent of the population is listed as non-Hispanic White. Yet Cameron only managed to garner 30 percent of the vote in Jefferson County. What does seem clear from looking at election data from across the state is that Daniel Cameron was far more popular with rural White voters than with people living in urban areas like Jefferson and Fayette counties. It appears that the vast majority of African American voters in the state voted for Gov. Beshear.
On the positive side, one can take the results as a sign that race is less important in Kentucky politics than it was 35 years ago when it was almost unimaginable to think that an African American would be nominated for governor by a major party in Kentucky. On the other hand, it is equally puzzling to think that an African American candidate would be rejected by most Black voters in such an election.
In one sense, Daniel Cameron is the fruit of the Civil Rights movement. Born in Texas, his father’s roots stretch back to Alabama. His parents grew-up when the walls of segregation were crumbling throughout the South. While prejudice certainly remained, unprecedented opportunities were now available to African Americans and his parents took advantage of those opportunities. Cameron’s mother, Sandra Aljean Washington Cameron became the Coordinator of the Engineering and Electronics Program at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. His father was a successful businessman, owning and operating a coffee shop.
Due to his parents’ success, Cameron grew up in a thoroughly middle-class household. Elizabethtown is a modest size community with small town values, but within an easy drive of cosmopolitan Louisville. I doubt that there was ever a time in his life when people didn’t believe that Daniel Cameron would go to college, and he did, graduating from the University of Louisville and later U. of L.’s Brandeis School of Law. As a law student, he clerked for conservative Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Kentucky. After graduating law school, he briefly worked for a Louisville law firm before becoming legal counsel to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.
His association with McConnell was critical to his later political career, but McConnell did not transform Cameron into a conservative. He already was. In an interview with Joe Sonka of the Louisville Courier Journal, Cameron stated, “I tell people I grew up in a conservative home and I’ve always been conservative.” He went on to say that, “his mother hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 and is a huge fan of what Trump has done to shift the Republican Party’s direction.” He noted that his parent’s position as small business owners influenced his views on taxes and government and he also cited his religious beliefs as influencing his political perspective. (The Courier Journal, May 5, 2023).
For a generation, Mitch McConnell defined Reagan conservatism for most Kentuckians. While McConnell favors scaling back government domestic spending, he is actually very sensitive to charges of racism. In his autobiography, McConnell reported that his “parents had instilled me with a deep-seated belief in equal and civil rights, which, given the upbringing in the Deep South, was quite extraordinary.” McConnell actually broke with one of his early mentors Congressman Gene Snyder because Snyder opposed the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With McConnell’s encouragement, Cameron successfully ran for and won his 2019 race for Attorney General. He was the first Republican since the 1940s to become attorney general and only the second African American to win a state-wide race in Kentucky (Jenean Hampton was elected lieutenant governor on the ticket with Matt Bevin in 2015).
In speeches given throughout the commonwealth, Cameron does not deny the injustices of the past, but chooses to concentrate on the opportunities of the present. In a speech delivered remotely several years ago during Big Sandy CTC’s Multicultural Day celebration, Cameron cited the achievements of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver as evidence that hard work and perseverance will lead to personal success. Certainly, that formula has worked for Cameron. Even though he lost his gubernatorial bid to popular Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, Cameron is by any measure a success in life.
Unfortunately, that has not always been the story for African Americans in Kentucky. Their hard work has often gone unrewarded. The cliche that someone is “working like a slave,” is no compliment. While the Black middle class has grown remarkably since the 1970s, a disproportionate number of African American children are born into generational poverty. Climbing out of that poverty is no easy task.
Any hope that Cameron could peel off a sizable portion of the Black vote from the Democratic Party in Louisville evaporated in his handling of the Breonna Taylor case. Cameron should have appointed a special prosecutor to handle the case, but instead he took a gamble.
When he opted to have his office act as the special prosecutor, he took full responsibility for the handling of the case. It is generally assumed that a prosecutor will lead a grand jury by the instructions that he gives the jurors and by the evidence presented to them. When the state grand jury failed to indict the two police officers who shot Breonna Taylor, but indicted a third officer who fired recklessly into a neighboring apartment, Cameron’s reputation took a hit. The demonstrations that followed were specifically aimed at Cameron.
I have no doubt that Daniel Cameron will continue to be an influential member of Kentucky’s Republican Party. He is confident, articulate and charismatic. His deep seated conservative values have a broad appeal to rural voters in the commonwealth. The only question that remains is what the next step in his political ascent will be.
