Time now to talk about some major political news with our good friend, Ryland Barton, who is a senior editor with NPR States team.

Good to see your island.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

Back on your home level turf this time, right.

Hope you had a great time at fiddle camp.

Oh, it's wonderful.

Good, good, good.

So we were talking before we started our taping that perhaps the question on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't tell me what involve a Kentucky governor, where the question would be who was a governor in a primarily southern state and an all red southern state whose prospects for a vice president and president are rising?

The answer is, of course.

Yeah.

Andy Beshear I guess this is something that we're going to I don't know.

This conversation is going to probably sound a lot different in a couple of days because there's this meeting that takes place tonight between President Biden and Democratic governors at the White House.

Some Democratic governors are voting it in.

But Andy Beshear is going to be there, along with some others, like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

And this all, of course, happens after in response to the president's debate performance last week, which is Democrats and to a lot of concern over the president's help and whether or not he can and should continue his candidacy for reelection.

So there's what a lot of talk on who a Democratic villain might be.

And there's some wondering whether or not Andy Beshear is going to be is one of those names, if that happens.

So these these are few ifs on down the road if that were to take place doing it.

So one thing is there's been some polling that's happened over the last few days that included Andy Beshear, his name.

And and I thought the one thing it was very notable that 70% of Democrats polled said that they had never heard of Andy Beshear, but he's still in a head to head all with Donald Trump Trail.

But among those Democrats, that 36 to 40, which just kind of, according to that poll, showed just how deeply Democrats oppose Trump.

So I think one part of it is, you know, for us Kentuckians, especially to keep it real, is that not everybody in the country, in the nation, knows who Andy Beshear is.

But granted, he does have a story I think, that he would like to tell the nation about why he might be a good candidate for this.

I mean, something he's been talking a lot about is Kentucky's economic successes.

But also, you know, he's somebody who, you know, reassured the state and was a prominent figure throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

You know, of all those governors who were like kind of trying to help handle that.

Right.

And has managed to be somewhat successful in his political agenda and dealing with a Republican supermajority.

And a lot of people who'd like to know how he's able to do that and learn from his playbook.

We should say that he is going to be in person while some of the Democrats who are invited might be doing that virtually.

Can't speak for Gretchen Whitmer and the rest.

But Andy Beshear will be in person, so that could be equally as telling.

Yeah, he'll be there in person and he really has been making the rounds.

So he was on CNN last night, you know, in an interview talking about, you know, talking about the president's health.

And I thought that that was that was some of the it was notable that I hadn't heard from any of these Democratic rising stars that we we've heard from a bit, which and he was really talking about the president's health and saying that the president needs to keep governors more informed of it.

And that seemed a step further than any other Democrat had really talked about, or at least Democratic governor and talked about.

So these next few days, the president has several appearances.

He has several campaign stops that he's going to be making.

I believe Gavin Newsom is actually gardening, joining him at one in Michigan.

So I think we're going to learn a lot about how the president feels and how he's presenting himself over these next few days.

So, yeah, we'll see on waiting.

Right.

And we should say that when the governor was asked, I believe it was yesterday, that he was flattered to be in to talk about a replacement for President Biden.

Right.

But that he would kind of just wait and see if he'd still remain in the race.

So he's being pretty nebulous in his responses so far, but may be leaving the door open.

Right.

He's not given a hard No, certainly.

Hasn't closed it.

That's right.

Let's move now and talk about an election lawsuit.

This involves the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and I believe the Kentucky chapter of the NAACP.

They're suing the Kentucky secretary of state and Board of Elections over a 2021 election law.

What's their beef and what do they want rectified?

Yeah, So this is it's part of the law that requires people to be removed from the state's voter rolls if they move out of state.

So really, when they go to register to vote in a different state, that that state and that say alert Kentucky about that person is moved under this law, that person's name could be removed from Kentucky's voter rolls in five days.

These groups are saying that that's a little too fast.

And that actually arose afoul of federal law, which requires the state to make an effort to reach out to the people who are referred to by those names to make sure that they are that they're actually the same person that was really, you know, really the allege, especially in the really simple case.

So there's a lot of people with the same names in this country and so just trying to avoid accidents in which somebody, somebody from voter registration is removed accidentally because, you know, somebody with the same name who moves to a different state and registers there.

So, yeah, we'll see where this goes.

This is something that this is an effort that was really championed by Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams and is he is opposing this lawsuit.

So we'll see where it goes.

Yeah.

And finally, just real quick note about the former LAPD chief, Jacqueline Guanabara, well, who had resigned last week, who just this week has said, well, I didn't resign necessarily under my own volition.

And she had a pretty scathing letter that was revealed to the press and the public about her feelings about the department and the leadership that she felt caused a malaise among the department.

Can you tell us a bit more about this?

Yeah.

So this letter, it was published online by WUKY and it confirms one that that Mayor Craig Greenburg had asked her to resign.

But yeah, she and she really leans into some of the department's problems.

She did say that she was proud of the work that she had done there, but also said that there are long standing cultural deficiencies that permeated the agency.

She blamed that on certain members of leadership, though she didn't name any names in this.

And she said that their professional and ethical apathy throughout the the the police administration, their, you know, local police departments been having a rough time over these last few years.

They're currently under investigation from the Department of Justice and currently negotiating a consent decree over a pattern.

So after the DOJ showed that they had a pattern and practice of violating people's civil rights.

So this really comes at a turbulent time in the department and there's an interim police chief there, and we don't really know much about what's next if there's even going to be a national search for a new police chief.

So you know, I think that there's a lot of hope that the that the agency can and turn itself around here.

But this is just another blow after, you know, a serious series of scandals from this particular police chief.

And more to come for sure and more to watch.

Well, thank you, Ryland Barton, for doing the same.

So good to see you.

Take care.

Thanks, Renee.