Time now for our midweek check in on some major political developments in Kentucky and here at the state capital this week with Rosalind Barton, who's the managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, too.

So let's talk about the debate, the first debate for the Republican primary for governor.

We had four contenders.

One was conspicuously absent.

Talk to us about who was there, what was said and who was not.

Right.

So we got Republican Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Corales.

We've got Daniel Cameron, the attorney general.

We've got by Harman, the state auditor, and Alan Keck, the mayor of Somerset, the only one on stage who wasn't a statewide officer.

So, yes, conspicuously conspicuously missing was Kelly Kraft, former U.N. ambassador, who is really trying to jockey and get her name out there.

She's the one who's spending a lot of money on TV ads at this point.

But without her there, this is an opportunity for those candidates to try and set each other apart from one another, which is difficult at times.

I thought there were a couple notable moments.

Felt like a Somerset mayor, Alan Clark was really trying to do that, trying to differentiate himself from those other candidates a bit, showing that he would be in favor for creating some exceptions for cases of rape or incest or Kentucky's near-total ban on abortion.

I thought that one was pretty notable.

So it's there were no it wasn't the most fiery of debates.

And I think that's as much as you can expect at this point in the campaign season.

Things really start heating up once you're in that month before the primary, which is on May 16th.

Right.

And so did anybody come out as the winner?

Everybody comes out claiming that they're the winner.

I don't know.

I've always felt that it's a little bit hard to do that.

I think that Daniel Cameron was certainly playing the playing it safest, really the lead.

He didn't really seem to be feeling the need to try and undercut his opponents too much.

He's really already gunning for the general election.

He's trying to go after Andy Beshear.

He's trying to broadly go after the left, you know, creating creating the, you know, the opponents who Republican voters will be thinking about once they're in that general election.

So hard to find an exact winner here, but they're just trying to get their names out there for once in this off, off year election when a lot of people might not necessarily be playing at paying attention.

And Andy Beshear is probably the most well known figure in this race at this point.

They're just trying to.

Be extremely high approval ratings, 61, 61%.

So there's two more debates left.

We don't want to call the Katy appearance a debate, but that's May 1st.

And then there's one with the Kentucky Sports Radio on the 19th or 16th of April.

So we'll keep our eyes out for those.

So let's talk about the first big ad punch, negative ad that came out on behalf of Kelly Kraft.

It was not her ad, but it was a political action committee on her behalf that called Daniel Cameron, quote, a soft establishment teddy bear.

Yes.

And the teddy bear is really the you know, so far the meme of the of this race right now.

And yeah, that's Kelly Kraft's whole mission right now or those align with Kelly Kraft, we should say, is really getting her name out there and also trying to undercut some of her opponents.

Daniel Cameron being the presumed front runner in this race right now.

And they're trying to portray him as not being as effective of a Republican as as Republican voters would want.

They highlighted the case in which he hadn't joined a lawsuit of other attorneys general fighting the Biden administration.

That being said, Daniel Cameron has really joined a lot of other lawsuits against the Biden administration, but they found this one particular case.

And I think that that's a hint of what we're going to see in the months to come until the primary of what Kelly Kraft and and and aligned can campaigns are going to do to try and undercut Daniel Cameron if he continues to be the runner.

Of course, Kelly Kraft could do her own negative ad.

So and eventually, you know, but there's a little risk in that.

And those will come a little closer to the primary election.

I mean, that's something that we saw last time.

We had a really tight Republican primary back in 2015, get a little closer to the election.

And that's when candidates are really starting to get into fights, you know, putting each other's names out there and having a little bit of those tighter, tense debates.

Yeah.

So Cameron also released his education plan probably after we spoke last Wednesday.

And he wants to increase the starting pay for teachers.

Sounds familiar.

And also keep teachers from being bombarded and overwhelmed with all their administrative tasks.

So this sounds kind of familiar.

Those really familiar.

That's the thing that Governor Beshear has proposed since since he proposed his first budget back in 2020.

So I think that there is a little bit of a pattern here.

And the other issue we saw that on as well was medical marijuana with Ryan Quarrels coming out in favor of that last week, which I think we discussed then.

So there is some you know, I think people recognize that like raising teacher pay is kind of a popular issue.

It's something that Beshear really built his campaign around in in 2019 and even before that when he was attorney general.

So I think that Cameron is trying to go ahead and again, keeping an eye on that general election, trying to keep some of those teachers in his camp who like very well might vote Republican.

What's interesting, too, this is out of line with what the legislature's done.

Granted, they've raised Sikh money, but not all of that always flows down to teachers.

Yeah, that's right.

Left it up to the districts to decide, even though they gave a lot more money, perhaps, But that didn't always flow down.

It's always good to talk to you.

Thanks so much.