Do we like them?

Do we like Andy Beshear?

Our score: 8 out of 10. He has stood up for trans kids and LGBTQ+ Kentuckians at real political cost, and nothing harmful turned up, but the rest of the record I could open is thin.

Andy Beshear is the Democratic governor of Kentucky, a state Republicans dominate, and that's the whole pitch. He chairs the Democratic Governors Association and is widely talked about as a possible 2028 presidential candidate. His line on the stump is that he is “living, breathing proof that Democrats can win anywhere”.

He also turns up. He has attended the Kentucky Fairness Rally since 2020, the first sitting Kentucky governor to do so, and this February he told the crowd not to back down to Republican supermajorities or to a president. He framed it through his faith, saying he's tired of “faith being hijacked to hurt people”. Faith used to help people rather than hurt them is exactly the kind of religious this page is happy with.

The harm check, explicitly: in the pages I read, nothing harmful from him on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or public health. I didn't turn up much solid on his climate or immigration record, so that's a gap, not a clean bill. He is also a partisan Democrat, and his critics have plenty to say about his politics, but that isn't harm.

The latest stoush is classic Kentucky. At the Fancy Farm picnic in August, Senator Rand Paul said Beshear would be remembered for being “neutered at every turn by the Republican legislature”, and Representative Andy Barr took a swipe too. Beshear, who skipped the event for a family commitment, hit back on X, mostly by mocking Paul's stance on Trump. Standard political barbs, none of it a character problem.

On the good-person side, the record I could open is ordinary political friction. A federal appeals court in 2025 let a lawsuit continue in which a Lexington business owner and later candidate alleges the governor's administration retaliated against him. Republicans also called an $81,000 budget for his Davos trip excessive and said he's positioning for a presidential run. Beshear suggested the criticism came mainly from one freshman Republican lawmaker. Neither is a finding against him.

So the verdict: we'd back him. He's earned it on the thing that matters here, standing up for LGBTQ+ kids when it was politically costly. Marks off for what I couldn't confirm, like his climate and migration record, but nothing I read points the wrong way.