Kentucky Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron made a handful of campaign stops in far western Kentucky Friday, including one in Paducah.
Speaking to several local and state elected officials as well as members of the Republican Party of McCracken County, Cameron took aim at Kentucky Department of Education and the department’s previous guidance that indicated teachers should use trans and nonbinary students’ preferred pronouns.
“[KDE Commissioner Jason Glass] told teachers that they needed to get another job if they didn't buy into the gender ideology curriculum coming into our schools,” Cameron said. “I think that's the wrong message to send to teachers that are having to deal with and compete with other challenges in the classroom and externally as well.”
Cameron – whose wife was an elementary school teacher for several years in Oldham County – also said schools “don't need to be incubators for liberals and liberal and progressive ideas.”
The attorney general also criticized some of incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s policies and decisions he made during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying closures in 2020 negatively impacted small businesses and their owners, while some big businesses were allowed to stay open. He also condemned the decision to close churches and worshiping spaces.
Cameron also stopped in Mayfield Friday morning, where he said he spoke with officials about the city’s efforts to recover from the December 2021 tornado outbreak.
With communities recovering from tornado damage in western Kentucky and many in eastern Kentucky still grappling with the impact of last summer’s historic flooding, Cameron said it is part of the executive government’s role to help those efforts be more effective and swift. He also said it is an important responsibility for the government to have accountability when it comes to where the funds from the Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund and the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund are going, something he argued the current administration isn’t accomplishing.
“Unfortunately, what we've seen from this current administration is some incompetence when it comes to money going where it's supposed to go,” Cameron said. “And we've seen even in Eastern Kentucky when it comes to some of the flooding and the debris that it’s still there almost a year later. That's incompetence from our current administration in Andy Beshear.”
A poll from the Republican firm Cygnal in early June found that Cameron and Beshear were in a dead heat in the race for the governor's mansion.
Cameron has so far remained mum on naming a potential running mate to serve as his lieutenant governor. Under Kentucky law, gubernatorial candidates must name a running mate by the second Tuesday of August.
The General Election is on Nov. 7.
