We are down to just 15 days before Kentucky's general election.

Governor Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron are tonight's guests on Kentucky tonight.

The Democratic incumbent is hoping for a second term while his challenger is looking to give the Republican Party control of both the legislature and the governor's mansion.

Both candidates shared the stage over the weekend during a debate televised by W LCC, y in partnership with the League of Women Voters.

They discussed education, workforce participation and the economy.

Each candidate was also asked what they consider to be the state's most pressing issue when it comes to the opioid epidemic.

The opioid epidemic is something that has impacted everyone.

We have all lost people, multiple people, to fatal overdoses.

We will not solve this problem by blaming each other or making it partizan.

Who's to blame?

Are the big pharma companies, the big opioid companies that sent thousands of pills into small counties for every man, woman and child.

They knew it was addictive, yet they counted their money while our people died.

What we have to do is to continue to support our law enforcement community that has secured and gotten enough fentanyl that would have killed about 28 million people this year under both President Trump and Biden.

I sent National Guard to our border because border security is national security and we have to continue to work with our treatment community.

Since I become governor, we've increased our number of treatment beds by 50%.

And because of that and the hard work of so many, we were one of only eight states in the country that had a significant decrease in overdose deaths last year.

We see some light.

We see some hope.

Let's stick to it.

Let's support those in treatment and recovery if you're trying.

We're proud of you, Mr. Cameron.

Well, look, when I ran for attorney general, I talked about the importance of making sure that we combat the drug epidemic.

And it's larger than just opioids.

It's fentanyl.

It's other drugs as well.

And so I've been proud to be the attorney general that is in the process of bringing nearly $900 million to the state to fight this drug epidemic.

And the reason that we're able to bring this money to the state is because I said that we don't need to just file lawsuits.

We need to hold these companies accountable.

And those companies came to the table and are bringing nearly $900 million to the state.

It's one of the proudest moments I've had as attorney general is to work with our legislature and the county judge executives in so many mayors and county attorneys to bring that money into the state.

It's not a magic elixir.

It's not an end all be all, but it is a significant down payment in removing and helping remove an affliction that has plagued our people for far too long.

Another topic of the debate was COVID 19.

Governor Beshear and General Cameron were each asked about what they learned from the pandemic.

This attorney general's refusal to act like this pandemic was as deadly as it was.

It a slap in the face of the heroism that they showed.

The fact that he claims that he would never have even paused education would have sent thousands of teachers with many health issues into a classroom before vaccines were even available.

I was the first governor in the country to prioritize our educators for vaccines.

That's why we were one of the first states in the country that had all of our school systems, all of them back in in-person learning.

I made decisions to save lives.

It's clear this attorney general would have played politics that would have caused more death or destruction.

I'd rather save lives than win reelection.

Mr. Cameron, would you like a rebuttal?

Well, Andy Beshear functioned more like Gavin Newsom than any red state governor that we saw here in this country.

And the fact of the matter is, we were the only state in the union that shut down the chiropractors.

Again, this governor picked winners and losers.

A lot of small businesses have never recovered.

They are still shut down to this day.

And it's because of these shortsighted decisions that Andy Beshear made.

You know, it's one thing for Gavin Newsom to tell you that he regrets some of the decisions that he made, But you'll never hear that from Andy Beshear because he's too proud.

And we'll never say that he made mistakes during the pandemic.