President Donald Trump and Republican
governors are colluding to try to rig the 2026 midterm
elections in their favor through gerrymandering. They’re helped by the fact
that rural voters in large swaths of many states are largely abandoning the
Democrats, who already suffer from a rural skew in the Senate and Electoral
College. But these Democratic disadvantages don’t have to be destiny. Last
week, in a Washington Post
op-ed titled, “This slap
in the face to rural America is a chance to turn it blue,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear argued that Democrats can’t just talk
about the challenges facing rural Americans now, but have to deliver on
promises on what rural America can be: “Tackling affordability is not enough. To truly lead again, Democrats
must be the party of aspiration.… Democrats are good at explaining our
“what.” Let’s get good at explaining our ‘why.’”
This weekend, Beshear is set to be sworn in as the head of the Democratic Governor’s Association. His elevation comes as no surprise, given that he’s a rarity in national politics: a Democratic leader in an otherwise red state. He won the office in 2019 by just over 5,000 votes, in a state Donald Trump won by 30 percentage points in 2016, and his time as governor has made him even more popular in Kentucky (he handily won reelection in 2023). Whether or not he seeks higher office after his second term ends in 2027, he’ll help shape the party as it seeks to recover voters it lost to Trump.
On Thursday, I asked Beshear about rural America, Democratic messaging, and whether he’s running for president in 2028. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Monica Potts: When I saw the headline, I thought you were going to write about farmers. I didn’t see that, and I was pleasantly surprised. What you did write about is the loss of hospitals, where a lot of rural Americans work now. I’m wondering if you feel that that’s something that people misunderstand about rural America. People still tend to think of it as a largely farming area and largely affected by agricultural policy. Do you think that this is something people miss about the new reality of living in rural America?
Andy Beshear: I think people miss that rural America is more complicated, and they might not think that there are more industries, that there need to be more services, and that there are serious implications of policies like the one that the Trump administration has pushed forward. Our fastest growing industry in rural Kentucky is health care. And so the idea that the “big, ugly bill” would gut rural health care means it’s not only reducing options to get health care in rural America, but it’s attacking a foundation of the economy. Every rural hospital we have is the number one payroll in its community and the number two employer behind the public school.
If you remove that business, if you remove those employees who live and spend money in that community, you don’t just close the rural hospital. You may close the local bank, the local coffee shop, the local restaurant, the local insurance company. Not thinking about health care as essential to rural America is not understanding how the economy works.
MP: As an example in your piece, you wrote about helping to bring a green paper plant into a rural county in Kentucky. And I read that, and I thought, well, that sounds nice, but we can’t do that everywhere. What are some of the other kinds of ideas about the real investment it would take to kind of help sagging economies in rural counties now.
AB: Well, first off, I think we have to be intentional where we can be to locate new jobs in rural Kentucky and in rural America, and I see a greater hunger for it out of the private sector than at any point in my lifetime. We landed the Pratt paper mill, 300-plus new jobs at $40 an hour outside of Henderson, Kentucky, former coal mining town. We put two giant battery plants, two of the biggest in the world, next to a town called Glendale, a very small town in Hardin County, but outside of Elizabethtown. So we’ve created as many rural jobs as we have urban jobs by making sure that we’re putting the opportunity in front of those businesses.
But to make that possible everywhere in rural America, it takes a real investment in infrastructure. It takes making the upfront investment that says to rural Kentucky and rural Americans that we care about you and we want you to be able to compete for those next great jobs. Look at Appalachia, which the topography creates big challenges. We are four-laning the Mountain Parkway, which is basically our own interstate-like road to the heart of Appalachia. Why? Because if you want to put a new manufacturing facility, they’re going to want four lanes so that they can ship their products across the United States. It means we also have to invest in water and wastewater, which, you know, there are many parts of rural America that still don’t have clean drinking water, which should be a basic human right, but then you have to have the amount of water necessary to bring in that next opportunity. So in Kentucky, we have programs like what we call our Product Development Initiative, where we put state dollars into improving infrastructure at sites.
MP: The plant that you wrote about is an environmentally-conscious paper plant. When I see a lot of people talking about Democrats winning back voters, they’re talking about moderating on some issues, including things like the environment, and some cultural issues. I’m wondering if you think that to win voters in rural America, Democrats need to moderate on anything?
AB: I think when it comes to jobs, they’re not Democrat or Republican, they’re not left or right. A green job to someone is a job that pays them enough to support their family. I remember that paper plant and the groundbreaking, and we’re in this former coal town, and the owner comes on through a zoom on a massive screen and says, we’re bringing 350—and then he said the phrase “green jobs”—to Henderson. And everyone stood up and applauded, because they are great jobs where you can support a family. I believe that communities are ready.
And I also believe that sustainability isn’t primarily being driven by government policy. It’s being driven by the demands of the private sector. Every company that comes to Kentucky with their power wants affordability, wants reliability, and then wants sustainability. And so for me, being pragmatic, I’ve got to deliver all three, which means we need greener, more sustainable power production. We need greener jobs, because that’s what the private sector and ultimately consumers are demanding. So no, I don’t think that we have to back away from beliefs about climate change, but I do think within those beliefs, we have to deliver a better life for our people. That means, if you can bring in good, paying green jobs, people of all political ideologies will work in them because it makes life better and easier for their family.
MP: One of the things that I thought that President Joe Biden was under-appreciated about was that he did make a big effort to bring new plants, especially to red states, and to reform American industrial policy through the Inflation Reduction Act. He did talk a lot about the day-to-day economic concerns that people had. He walked with unions, and he tried to reach out to workers. Why do you feel like that message wasn’t convincing, even when Vice President Kamala Harris took it up in her race in 2024?
AB: Well, I think two things. First, as Democrats, we got to get dirt on our boots, and we’ve got to show up in the areas where our policies are creating new jobs, new opportunities, more accessible health care, safer infrastructure, better schools. The signing in the Rose Garden isn’t real anymore. A signing of a bill in Frankfort [Kentucky’s capitol] doesn’t directly impact people on that day. So we’ve got to be there at the announcement, at the groundbreaking. And you know, people make fun of it [but] the most important one is the ribbon cutting. Why? Because the jobs are there, because the future is better for families. We’ve got to make sure that people in rural America see Democrats and see the results of the policies that we’re pushing for.
The second piece, though, is we’ve got to do things faster. The Biden administration passed a lot of good legislation that has spurred a lot of economic development in my state, but the Democrats need to admit that there are times when we are over-regulated, and we’ve created so many rules that some programs that we believe are essential for the American people simply take too long. American people don’t see and feel now the Internet-for-All program. It’s been three years, and we don’t have a single inch of fiber in the ground. So if you’re a Democrat or a Republican and you believe that the internet is essential, then we should be able to develop a program that gets it out much, much faster.
MP: What are some of the regulations that you feel like could be maybe waived or used to speed up the process?
AB: What we’ve seen in Kentucky is even a permitting process doesn’t have to be adversarial. If you were talking to the companies and groups that you’re working with, we get most of our factories up and running three to six months faster than most states, and we abide by every environmental and workplace safety rule. What we do is work with and communicate with groups that are doing these projects. They know the expectations. If there are ways to find a solution, move something one direction or another, you impact fewer streams, you invoke fewer rules. In the “Internet-for-All,” it wasn’t that they were going to provide the money, set the rules, and then audit us to make sure that we followed them. It was that we had developed every piece of a plan we had to contract and subcontract before we could even submit the plan to potentially be approved. It was set up as a multi-year process before the construction ever started. And again, it was meant to be transformational. But if you want to actually transform in a way that helps people’s everyday lives, you’ve got to be a little bit impatient. You’ve got to understand that people are hurting now and need help now. But if it takes five years to put a program in place, you may have lost an entire generation that needed that help, that needed that assistance, or that deserves that infrastructure.
MP: Speaking of losing a generation, I know that in Kentucky there were some really bad river floods a few years ago, and some early decisions made by the Trump administration in a second term may have delayed some of the money going out for recovering from those floods. There are other issues like that going on now, where we’re losing funding for science, for education, for all kinds of things. And I’m wondering how people in the near term kind of survive, or think about the future.
AB: Decisions by the Trump administration are making life a lot harder for our American families. Start with tariffs that are raising the price on everything. That young couple in rural or urban America that can’t buy their first house, even though they’re older than their parents were when they could buy it, it’s only become harder for them with tariffs on lumber and upholstery and cabinets, virtually everything that goes into a house has been made more expensive by the tariffs.
Then move to the big, ugly bill that’s going to make it harder to get health care in your own community. Many will lose coverage. People have to drive two hours just to give birth. And what does that mean near the end of a pregnancy? Does it mean staying in a hotel where your husband or spouse is hours away and might not be there?
The Trump administration says it’s going to [change how it assesses] natural disasters, saying large snowstorms might not be included in the future. Well, those have significant costs, and people’s lives are on the line every time that there is a large snowstorm. Look at the amount that’s being shifted in the SNAP program. You know, almost $66 million of new administrative costs in Kentucky, and what that’s going to mean to food availability. All of these policy positions by the Trump administration makes life harder for for Americans, but makes life a lot harder for rural Americans.
Trump pushed for a tax cut for the wealthiest of Americans who primarily live in big urban cities, but won’t push for an extension of a tax credit to help people who get health care through the ACA that primarily live in rural America.
MP: In some ways, do you think that the actions the Trump administration has taken makes the job for Democrats easier in 2026 and 2028 because they can say, “Look what we can offer as a change from this, if you don’t like what he’s done”?
AB: I think it puts Democrats in a better position if the Democratic Party remains laser-focused on people’s everyday needs and then provides them the roadmap to a better life. That’s why I talk about simply saying “affordability” isn’t enough. We need to be talking about it a lot. It needs to be talking about the American dream, where it’s not just that you can pay your grocery bill at the end of the month, but you can actually get ahead. The young couple can get that new house. You can take your family on the same vacation you went on as a kid. You believe if you show up and work hard at your job that you can be a little bit better off, and that your kids can be much better off. Yes, I think that’s a compelling message for all of America, and it’s probably more compelling sadly, because of the pain that Trump is causing and will continue to cause.
MP: We’ve avoided talking about agricultural agricultural policy a little bit, but it does shape a lot of how rural America is funded. And I’m wondering if there’s anything you think should be revised or reformed in agricultural policy.
AB: Well, you look at what the tariff policy is doing to soybean farmers that may lose the Chinese market, the largest market, potentially forever, to Brazil and Argentina, at a time when the U.S. is trying to send billions of dollars to Argentina. These are hard-working farmers that when they’re not growing soybean, they’re growing corn, and Donald Trump’s tariffs and his attacks on the sovereignty of Canada have impacted our bourbon industry, which is a huge purchaser of the corn. You look at the elimination of USAID, you look at the elimination of the Farm-to-Cafeteria programs, and our farmers have been getting hit every way possible, losing multiple markets all at the same time. Now, I’m starting to see them speak out. Certainly, our cattle farmers are speaking out, and that’s important, because we all care about our families more than we care about any political party, and we need to make sure that simply being a Democrat or Republican isn’t as important as being an American with an economy that can work for all of us.
MP: Are you going to run for president?
AB: Well, this weekend, I’m going to become head of the Democratic Governors Association. What you’re going to see out of me in 2026 is working to elect Democrats all over the country.
I think you’re going to see us win in rural America. You know, we’ve got a very strong candidate in Iowa, [gubernatorial candidate] Rob Sand, I’m excited to see his campaign. And if we do our work, we’ll change the map for 2028 where Democrats won’t just be battling in five states with zero margin of error. We’ll have an expanded map to where whoever our candidate is can compete in more places and get their message out to more Americans.
