Time now for our into week review of the major political developments in Kentucky, i.e.

the Kentucky governor's primary.

And we have our election night commentators back.

They can't get enough of Katie and we can't get enough of them.

Trey Grayson, Bob Babich, good to see you.

Good to see you again.

They know who you are by now.

I can go all of the formalities.

Okay, so takeaways from Tuesday.

Go.

Well, Cameron won by more than people expected.

Gave an impressive election night speech and went a long way to, I think, unifying the party.

Which is what is the first step when you're challenging an incumbent governor?

The other thing is I'd say no real surprises on the Republican side from the outcomes.

So those were probably my top two takeaways.

So you, Bob, and about calls coming in second and Kelly Craft a distant third.

Was that surprising to you?

I think it was surprising to a lot of people.

What you saw, though, with a 12 person field, people were saying, gosh, you could win the Republican nomination with a third of the vote.

So that kind of became a mark you had to pass.

You could have hypothesize that Cameron would have 40%, but nobody saw 48%, because I've never heard anything like that.

That was a major move at the end of the race.

So now everybody's talking about who is he going to pick as his running mate.

And everyone a lot of people in the political bubble say, of course, it would be Ryan calls.

Does Ryan Crosbie even want it?

Right.

Well, that's a threshold question.

It's not a great job, you know.

And why is it a great job?

So since we switched to governors and lieutenant governors running together in the fall and we just tweaked the rule this year, now you don't pick your running mate until after you win the primary.

No lieutenant governor has really gone on to do anything.

And in most times, many times anyway, it seems like they've had a falling out before the before the next election or before the time in office was up.

So.

So there's maybe a political argument for not wanting to be a lieutenant governor.

So it could be the coral's doesn't want to do it.

He might think there's other things, but if I were dating Daniel Cameron, I would give him a strong look.

I mean, he I think I wasn't surprised.

He ultimately was second place, but he was he was he has a strong rural base, a lot of endorsements across the state.

He works really hard and he can stay on message.

And one of the things you want in a running mate is a surrogate who can go around.

The other thing and this is important to me.

I want somebody who could be the Governor Ryan calls could be the governor.

He could something were to happen to Cameron Corales, could step into that governor's chair and nobody would nobody would hesitate to say, oh, he's of course he's qualified.

So I think that's an important element, too.

But there's other considerations.

There's gender, there's geography.

Right.

But as far as bridging the party together.

Coral Springs a lot to the table.

More so than a craft ward as a lieutenant, probably candidate.

Yeah.

Urban.

Rural is important in every state, including this one.

But I hear people say I like Rand Paul's.

I could work with Rand Paul's, and that's across the board.

To have that level of popularity makes him a valuable person.

Whether he's chosen as lieutenant governor or not, he will be a factor for the future.

As I heard Al Cross, though, put it today on a local NPR station.

It's kind of, though, the kind of job where the governor says job and you just ask how high this girls want that.

Right.

He might not.

Yeah, he may want to be a university president.

As I've suggested.

He suggested.

I think he would be excellent in that role some place in our state, and he could have perhaps even gone outside it.

But let's hang on to him.

I think we gave him three different jobs, an election commission, credit education commission, the third one.

I think that's a credit to what we think of him and what a lot of Kentuckians, even those who didn't vote for him first.

You know, if you were had multiple choices, quarrels was well-liked by a wide swath of the electorate.

Now, Coleman has grown in the job for sure.

Jacqueline Coleman.

Absolutely.

So, yes, you do get some of the leftover assignments.

Governor goes to this big group and you may go to a smaller one.

But there's so many opportunities out there and so many needs to be present to cut a ribbon or welcome a company or any number of other things.

They're more ceremonial.

And then there's the policy side, too.

And her coming from education accruals, coming from agriculture, a huge part of our economy.

It would make sense to have somebody like that.

What do you make of the 14 plus percent voter turnout, which is higher than the ten that I think was the low bar?

It's only looks good because we were thinking it was going to be part of the day.

It's still not a high number.

Right.

But it's better to be wrong and and be a little bit under.

When I when we were.

You had to do the same thing.

When we make these predictions, we're kind of like, all right, absentees, whether we're hearing.

I don't really know.

Right.

So you always want to be wrong on the low side.

And so because you'd rather not be surprised that it would be even worse.

So 14 a little bit better than expected.

One of the real challenges is that there wasn't a lot for Democrats to do.

That created less buzz, less turnout on their side.

And there is this sort of symbolism where, you know, they kind of higher Republican turnout, higher interest works.

And, you know, on the Democratic side, too, and just didn't get that push.

Right.

They weren't going to get a Democratic turnout for this election.

Yeah, but I kept hearing 20% over and over again that when Secretary State said it's going to be 10 to 15, I thought that's that's terrible.

And it is terrible.

It's not a good showing.

And even with a record breaking number of Republicans, that 300,000 there, a whole lot that didn't vote that have to be mobilized for the fall if there's a chance.

And for Democrats, it was an easy skip because everything counts on the fall.

There's also a lot of Election Day voting.

I was actually a poll worker on Saturday in Boone County, and we had fewer people vote on Saturday than we did on Friday or on Thursday.

And I was talking with some other clerks in the lead up to the election, and they were seeing similar very light turnout, one or 2% of the electorate going into the Election Day.

So we saw a much higher percentage of folks coming up on Election Day, which, you know, whether it's because the Republicans tend to vote more on Election Day because of habits, maybe still unfamiliarity with the new opportunities to vote early.

But that early voting turnout was low.

But it might have caused us to think that the ten was going to be correct.

Mm hmm.

And it's still worth it.

Early voting.

So worth it for sure.

We've got to stick with it.

So we started the general election campaign in earnest.

We've already got ads up.

There is a PAC ad already against Daniel Cameron.

There was.

I don't think you're calling it a unity event today.

Yeah, Republicans are.

Real quickly.

Tell us how that's shaped, how that shaped up.

Well, all the take it for the all of the ticket members.

The Republicans were at our headquarters and on today.

Also, Governor started a statewide tour in addition to the ads.

In 12.

Cities.

And I know there's they're working on getting an event schedule where all the gubernatorial candidates will get together.

I'm not worried about that event.

As a Republican, I know that's going to happen.

But getting that that ticket together was a good earned media opportunity that we had today.

Ambitious ads, not bad.

Because that's a bad result.

Already started fundraising, had a great week such that Cameron blasted out an email saying, I'm $650,000 behind and we're barely 72 hours from the election.

So we are definitely into the fall election and may stay at a higher torque, higher participation for the candidates and their teams from here on.

Yeah, we can never get enough in.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Right.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you For you.