The 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 2023, to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of Kentucky. Incumbent Democratic governor Andy Beshear won re-election to a second term, defeating Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. If Cameron had won, he would have become Kentucky's first African-American governor.
This race was one of two Democratic-held governorships up for election in 2023 in a state Donald Trump won in 2020. The other was held in Louisiana, which Jeff Landry flipped for the Republicans. This was the first gubernatorial election in the state's history in which both major party candidates had previously held the position of attorney general; Beshear held the position from 2016 to 2019, after which he was succeeded by Cameron. This is the first election since 1999 where the party that won the gubernatorial election lost the following presidential election. Beshear became the third two-consecutive-term governor in Kentucky history.
Beshear's victory has been attributed to his broad popularity among Democrats and independents, as well as approximately half of Republicans in the state. Compared to 2019, Beshear most improved his performance in suburban precincts; he increased his margins by nearly 6 percentage points in suburban areas, compared to 4.5 percentage points in urban and rural precincts.
Background.
A socially conservative southern state, Kentucky is considered safely Republican in federal elections, with Republicans holding both of its U.S. Senate seats and all but one of its U.S. House seats. In the 2020 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump carried Kentucky by 26 percentage points. However, the state was much more competitive as recently as the 1990s, when it voted for Bill Clinton twice, and Democrats remain competitive in many local and some state-level elections.
Beshear was first elected in 2019, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Matt Bevin, who had become widely unpopular for signing a pension reform bill for teachers and opposing a subsequent teachers' strike. In that same year, Cameron was elected attorney general, becoming the first African-American to be elected to that position.
Cameron gained national recognition as attorney general, especially due to his involvement in the Breonna Taylor case in 2020. He spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention on August 25, 2020. In September 2020, Cameron appeared on a shortlist of potential nominees to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court by President Trump.
On May 16, 2023, Cameron won the Republican nomination with 47.7% of the vote, a 26% margin over the second-place candidate, and Beshear won the Democratic nomination with 91.3% of the vote over two perennial candidates.
Democratic primary.
Endorsements.
 ;templatestyles src="Endorsements box/styles.css"/ ;Andy Beshear
Organizations
Newspapers and other media
Fundraising.
Beshear is the only candidate who has filed a financial disclosure.
Notes.
Partisan clients
References.
 ;templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" / ;
External links.
Official campaign websites