Interviews with voters help show how Bevin won race

By Anthony Pendleton
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications
Information for this story was also gathered by Kevin Erpenbeck, Megan Ingros, Jerry Seale and Ben Johnson.

GEORGETOWN, Ky. – Republican Matt Bevin rode a wave of voter discontent with the status quo and negative advertising to defeat Democrat Jack Conway to become Kentucky’s next governor, according to interviews Tuesday outside polling places.

“My biggest concern right now is that I want to see the Democrats out,” said Grover Johnson, a 64-year-old retired Toyota plant worker from Georgetown. “I’m not with their agenda, even though I was raised as a Democrat. With all their liberal policies, I’ve turned against them. So I’m voting straight Republican down the line.”

One common theme expressed by many voters, particularly Republicans, is that they were tired of negative television commercials.

Rhonda Fender, a 47-year-old Toyota worker, said she wasn’t pleased with how either candidate handled their campaigns, calling them “dirty and nasty” because of all the mud-slinging in ads and televised debates.

Sheila Hein of Lexington, a 74-year-old retiree, said she had planned to vote for Conway but “couldn’t take those negative ads anymore.”

The Conway campaign ran mostly negative ads during the race, and the independent Democratic committee supporting did likewise if not more. Bevin was attacked for things such as not releasing his tax returns, failing to pay taxes, and for seeming to flip-flop on issues.

On the Conway YouTube channel, there are 10 attack ads against Bevin and seven “positive” ads featuring Conway. Four of the seven positive ads were uploaded three months ago, while eight of the 10 negative ads were uploaded within the past seven weeks, according to the timestamps in the descriptions.

Lexington landlord Bill Hall, 82, said he’s a registered Democrat but voted for Bevin: “I vote for the man who would govern best and I think he has more experience in the business area. We got enough politicians.”

Voting against candidates and choosing between the lesser of two evils were also common themes among voters.

Doug Barnett, a 40-year-old attorney and member of the Fayette County Board of Education, said “Bevin’s ideas on teacher retirement were simply scary and unsustainable. . . . You do that with teachers’ retirement and you have no plan to fund it and move teachers to social security, all you’re going to do is defund the plan even more.”

Retired nurse and registered Republican Phillis Hasbrouck of Lexington said she couldn’t vote for Bevin because, “He's got a variety of answers. You never know which one's the right one. You ask him something and he tells you something one time, and the next time he tells you something else.” Hasbrouck said she voted for independent candidate Drew Curtis because she goes to a Lutheran church with him.

Curtis finished with less than four percent of the total vote. 28-year-old Shade Sloan of Georgetown said he voted for him because he likes Curtis’s ideas over the other candidates’ platforms.

“Curtis felt like a family member speaking to you,” Sloan said. “He seems like a real person and his ideals are something the state needs. He wasn’t pushing his party’s agenda. It’s all what he wants. I wholeheartedly believe he would have been the best candidate.”

Some voters, like 38 percent in the last Bluegrass Poll, said they were unhappy with the choice of candidates. Bill Gorman, a 66-year-old insurance agent from Lexington, said, “I wasn’t pleased with the choices. I think each party’s candidate did a poor job.”

Although some people did cast their votes against candidates, others still voted in favor of them.

John Sims, 51-year-old small business owner in Lexington and registered Republican, said he voted for Bevin because he believes the Republican Party will “represent small business owner needs better than the Democrats.”

For 44-year-old Veterans Affairs phlebotomist and Lexington resident Denise Emerson, the deciding factor in voting for Conway was that he “knows everything pretty much about Kentucky. Every position he’s ever carried has been Democrat and has been in Kentucky.”

President Obama was a factor for some voters.

Scott County Schools Parent Involvement Coordinator Sherry Cutright, 61, said she voted for Bevin because she shares his values and “I would not vote for anyone who identified with President Obama.”

The state’s Medicaid expansion and the Kynect health-insurance exchange were major issues in the race but were cited by few voters. None of the voters interviewed in Georgetown mentioned either, and only a few in Lexington voters mentioned health issues.

Daniel McQuin, a 45-year-old CPA, said he voted for Conway because Bevin wants to scale back the expansion of Medicaid: “It’s going to hurt a lot of people.”

Some voters said they either didn't follow the race very closely, or at all.

Rosemary Derbyshire of Lexington said she only occasionally followed it on the news and “very deliberately” did not watch debates.

“I find them somewhat ridiculous and extremely irritating,” said the 65-year-old retiree. “I think the way they do them is fairly pathetic.”