LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A third person has entered the Andy Beshear-JD Vance verbal jousting match.
Former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron appeared Tuesday on "Mornings With Maria Bartiromo" on Fox Business to discuss the state of the 2024 election. Beshear and Vance traded barbs earlier this week, with Beshear saying multiple times Vance "ain't from here," and criticizing Vance's portrayal of Appalachia and eastern Kentucky in his book.
Unsurprisingly, Cameron took his fellow Republican's side.
"I'll tell you this: there are a lot more people who grew up in Kentucky like JD Vance than they did Andy Beshear," he said.
Cameron unsuccessfully challenged Beshear in the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial race.
According to multiple reports, Beshear is one of four candidates being vetted by the Kamala Harris campaign to be her running mate. Beshear made the cable news rounds Monday and appeared to be auditioning for the role by going after Vance on a number of topics.
Vance's book "Hillbilly Elegy" documents his childhood growing up in Middletown, Ohio, while being raised by a mother from east Kentucky. Beshear called Vance "fake" and "a phony."
"This is a guy who would come maybe in the summers for some period of time, or to weddings or funerals," Beshear said on CNN. "And then he claims to be from eastern Kentucky, writes a book about it to profit off our people. And then he calls us lazy. This especially makes me angry about our people in eastern Kentucky. These are the hard-working coal miners who powered the industrial revolution. He calls them lazy and acts like he understands our culture and he's one of us. He's not. This is a guy who went out to Silicon Valley and tries to be an Every Man. He ain't one of us."
Vance responded at a campaign rally, suggesting Beshear had his career handed to him by his father, Steve Beshear, who served as governor from 2007-2015.
"It's very weird to have a guy whose first job was at his dad's law firm and inherited the governorship from his father to criticize my origin story," Vance said. "Yes, nobody gave me the governorship and nobody gave me a job because of who my father was. I'm proud of that."
Beshear defeated Cameron last year by five points. Cameron also criticized Beshear for some of his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Here in Kentucky, Donald Trump and JD Vance are going to win in the Commonwealth," Cameron said. "The other thing I know is Andy Beshear is a card-carrying liberal member of the Democratic party. Here's a man who shut down our churches, shut down our schools, let 2,000 criminals out of jail. He spent a lot of 2023 trying to run away from the national Democratic party, but in 2024 he's running towards the party and towards Kamala Harris."
