Time now for a midweek check in of some major political news this week so far with Rylan Barton, who's the managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see to an end.

So let's start with the governor's race, of course.

What else would we start with?

Daniel Cameron made a solo appearance on Spectrum News last night.

The governor, Andy Beshear, declined to participate, although he was represented there with some clips and some quotes that the host chose to insert during the conversation.

Abortion once again came up, and he is still saying what?

I mean.

I think it's been changing a little bit.

It's been evolving.

So this is the first time that he kind of publicly confirmed his new stance, which is that if forced to by a court order, essentially, then, yes, he would support exceptions for rape and incest.

So this is stances evolved a little bit over the course of the campaign.

Early on when asked, you know, did he support Kentucky's near-total ban on abortion?

Would you support any exceptions to it?

He said he supports it as is so really like not supporting exceptions for rape and incest.

He's kind of softened his stance after Governor Beshear released this ad last month featuring a young woman who was raped when she was very young as a as a pretty teenager and and and said, you know, really slamming Attorney General Cameron for not supporting cases, you know, horses in case cases of rape and incest, including this one.

It was it was interesting to see how Cameron kind of has developed his stance during this during this interview with on Spectrum one last night, because, you know, he was really trying to lean into that and and call out this particular situation by name and saying that, well, this is an example where, you know, we need to be sympathetic.

But the way in which he's kind of expressing his sympathy was, you know, we need to put that person, you know, the the sexual abuser in this case under the jail leading into a you know, a tough on crime.

Let's go after the you know, the people who are doing bad deeds rather than, you know, really talking at all about about the exception to abortion of or about the pregnancy.

And he's leaning into that.

I'm the pro-life, pro-life candidate without really being specific about that.

As specific as we've gotten is that if forced by a court order or the legislature passes a bill, including exceptions, then he would sign that.

But that's where we've arrived.

It has really evolved over the course of the year.

And we could go back to the first ad about abortion, the Beshear campaign or those in his court launched from the prosecutor and Jefferson County, where she ends by saying, you know, Daniel Cameron favors rapists and then victims rights.

So maybe he was trying to make a connection there of victims rights, like I'm your victims rights person.

Right.

I'm going to be hard on crime and still keep my pro-life position firmly in place.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And and what's so interesting about this is that this is a real split in how Democrats and Republicans have kind of run on abortion in recent years and that Andy Beshear, the Democrat, is going on the offensive on this on on kind of enshrining some semblance of of reproductive rights, of abortion rights, access, whereas Democrats and including Beshear in the past have really kind of tried to not talk about this too much, tried to remain silent on it a bit.

But I think last year's vote on the anti-abortion amendment, which Kentuckians rejected during the general election, has kind of emboldened reproductive reproductive rights activists a little bit and Democrats to lean in to that issue in Kentucky.

So Beshear also had a busy day yesterday, I guess you could say, because he released his infrastr Yeah, this was a kind of sweeping plan, calling for a clean water infrastructure, calling for a site development to attract more companies to come into Kentucky, also broadband.

A lot of these are pretty similar to efforts that both Beshear and the Republican leaders of the legislature have agreed to in recent years, especially during the COVID years, when there's a lot of federal money flowing through the state that could be spent on these sorts of projects.

So especially on water point, it's about $500 billion that he's proposing for clean water infrastructure, which is I mean, it's a proposal that came to the last budget a couple of years ago.

So I think he's, again, trying to lean out of politics on these on these types of issues, saying that these are, you know, beyond partizan differences.

These are things that everybody can agree to.

And and I mean, the record does show that that's something that Republicans have gotten behind in the legislature, too.

So another topic is Boeing is landing a pretty good deal with the Republican Party of Kentucky by finding or helping to finance the building we want to be very specific about.

This is not for any kind of campaign or person or cause, but for the actual maintenance and and upkeep of the Republican Party headquarters located in Frankfort.

This story, broken by Tom Loftus.

Tell us about this.

Yeah, Tom's been keeping a good eye on this particular fund.

So a couple of years ago, the legislature passed this law that removes the limit on how much companies or entities can donate to the building fund for four parties.

And yeah, this fund has become the Republican Party building fund.

It's become a real place for a lot of companies to donate to.

So Boeing is one they donated about $100,000 to that fund.

Recently, Pfizer donated about a million $1,000,000 to it recently.

Also, AT&T with $200,000.

It's it's a lot of big companies who, you know, are consistently lobbying in Kentucky and and, you know, wanting particular bills passed around here.

They've been so they've been putting a lot of money into the Republican candidates, into the Republican Party's building fund.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's building fund has really been languishing.

And according to Tom story, the third building fund it has is less than $1,000 of receipts expenses over the last three months.

And it had like $340,000 on hand as of September 30th.

So they've not been doing as well.

Obviously, a lot of this is because Republicans are mainly in power in Kentucky when it comes to the legislature.

Most of the statewide offices, you know, of congressional seats are, you know, the only statewide Democratic official is Governor Andy Beshear.

And yeah, so that's where all the money has been going into that Republican Party building fund.

Yeah, well, we'll have to leave it there for today.

But thank you so much for your time.

We always appreciate it.

Thanks, Renee.

It.