Time now to get a midweek check in of some major political news in Kentucky so far this week with our good friend Rylan Barden, who's managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you, Roland.

Good to see you, Renee.

A lot of things happening.

And let's just start with the polls and the governor's race.

So we'll start there.

Governor Andy Beshear looking pretty good.

And the latest polls, there was a morning consult poll.

That was a poll last week showing he has a pretty sizable lead over his Republican challenger at this particular point, Daniel Cameron.

Yeah, it's almost a story in itself of like how many polls we're getting during this race.

A lot of times we can we really don't know exactly where we're at in the race.

And if there's one thing we can learn from that, it's that it's probably pretty close.

But so one poll that came out this week was another.

All kind of reaffirming Governor Bush's job approval rate, which is consistently poll pretty high.

This one, as the morning Council poll showed him with a 64% approval rate, which is one of the highest in the nation.

He also, very interestingly, has the highest for a Democratic governor among Republican constituents.

49% of Republicans, according to that Morning Consult poll, support Bush's job performance, which is a big deal for a Democratic governor in a by most measurements, pretty Republican state running for reelection.

There were a couple other polls just in a head to head matchup between Beshear and Daniel Cameron.

One one that was conducted in late June showed Beshear with a 10.10 percentage point lead over Cameron, a Republican sponsored poll showed that a much tighter race.

And it was also the survey was done in July.

It showed Cameron with about a four percentage point behind Beshear by about four percentage points, which Republicans are saying, hey, listen, this is within the, you know, close to the margin of error.

And it shows that Daniel Cameron's within striking distance.

That is really the closest we've seen so far in any of these head to head polls.

So I think that, you know, by by most accounts, do Kentuckians can expect that it is a pretty close race.

The question is whether it's getting tighter over time and if it will continue to get tighter as we approach the fall campaign season.

Yeah, And if Fancy Farm would be a pivot point to things intensifying even more so, we'll see how the candidates do on that stage.

And of course, we'll see really the lieutenant governor pick for Daniel Cameron, be on a stage he has not been on before.

So that could fancy for him, we say doesn't win you an election, but can really cost you some points there and see if.

They can navigate the gantlet there.

And this will also be the first time that the Beshear and Cameron will be sharing a stage that fancy this campaign.

It'll be at a fancy farm, so there should be a few more occasions for that as we get closer to the election.

But Fancy Farm will be the first time.

Yeah, we hope there will be at least one more time that they'll be together at least.

Let's talk also about some what has been called exaggerated numbers when it comes to the violent crime rates diminishing like there seems to be some confusion about which numbers have been applied and really what the overall picture is.

Can you straighten this out for us?

Yeah, So viewers might remember earlier this month, the Governor Beshear held a press conference touting a lower reduced homicide rate in Kentucky over the course of his administration.

I guess it's really over between 2021 and 2022.

This week, the Herald-Leader reported that there's that that reduction actually isn't as big as the governor and the Kentucky State police were saying, because it didn't include some homicides that took place in Louisville.

And it sounds like this is a bit of a reporting discrepancy, but the difference is a difference of about 160 for the report.

There's actually they initially said that it went down 647, but actually the total is about 531.

So, you know, that is still a drop, but it's posing a question.

Know some of the numbers that Beshear or any other elected officials like to throw out about some change in in results over the course of their administration or their time in office.

A lot of times it's really hard to actually connect policies to statistics like that.

And it can be a little bit of a statistically dangerous thing to do and definitely got caught up in that.

Also, Beshear kind of went on the defense when it comes to some claims about him in these ads, about transgender issues.

So he came out with another out of his own right.

I've never supported gender reassignment surgery for kids.

And those procedures don't happen here in Kentucky.

I thought it was a very bold move.

A lot of times there's not a, you know, an ad of kind of the governor or candidate releasing an ad refuting a specific point that that a different political ad is making.

But, you know, this all goes back to SB 150, this big omnibus, anti-trans bill that passed out of the legislature this year.

One of the provisions in that bill was to ban banned minors from getting gender reassignment surgery, which is not a thing that takes place in Kentucky already.

Governor Beshear did veto that bill.

He's now saying in this ad, like, you know, yes, there are other parts of this bill that he was not in favor of, even though that bill also included this gender reassignment surgery provision.

And so he's he's just kind of trying to clarify his stance on that record.

Republicans aren't letting him, you know, really get away with it that easy again, pointing out that he vetoed that bill.

But, you know, I think he'll be able to kind of confidently say on the debate stage or now in TV ads, wherever it is, that, no, this is where he kind of draws the line.

Yeah, good point.

So we'll have to see how that all shakes out.

We're Roland Barton.

Thank you.

It's always good to see you.

Good to.