Kentucky governor says JD Vance's Appalachian 'origin story' doesn't add up

Potential vice presidential candidate Andy Beshear speaks at major Democratic Party event in Iowa

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a potential vice presidential candidate, speaks to the media in Iowa following a Democratic Party event in Des Moines. Photo By Douglas Burns

DES MOINES

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear spoke to nearly 500 people in Des Moines as the headliner of the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Liberty and Justice Dinner Saturday night.

But the audience that matters most for the potential rapid political ascendancy of the governor, a Democrat with Red State wins on his resume, is just one person — Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic Oval Office nominee who is now vetting running mates. Beshear, while not widely believed to be a leading contender, is on many short lists for the role.

 Beshear is in the Top 5 on one major political futures market.

"He has a core, you can see who he is," said State Auditor Rob Sand, a Democrat who met with Beshear for about 20 minutes, and also spoke at the dinner.

Beshear, in something of an audition Saturday night at the Iowa Events Center, unleashed a relentless Appalachian Mountain rain of criticisms and zingers aimed at Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio with roots in Kentucky — the latter the state where Vance says he will be buried with seven generations of his family.

Beshear alternated between elevating Harris with party faithful and crafting rhetorical attacks on Vance and former President Donald Trump, the Republican standard bearer for a third presidential election cycle in a row.

"I think Andy Beshear would be an amazing choice," said Adam Peters of Davenport, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party's Stonewall Caucus, which advocates for LGBTQ+ people. "I think everyone was so excited with what he had to say. Not only did he have a unifying message for Kamala Harris, but he had a textbook for Iowans to get in tune with what's going on in our state."

Peters, who will be a delegate at the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago, said Beshear was effective at taking the case to Vance.

"I definitely felt like he understands the assignment," Peters said.

Early in his speech, Beshear laid into Vance, the author of the best-selling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," about Vance's hardscrabble upbringing in rural Ohio, which included visits with family in Kentucky. Vance portrayed himself as a champion of working people, and in interviews and conversations in recent years was an outspoken critic of Trump, calling the former president at earlier points "cultural heroin" and "America's Hitler."

Bshear questions whether Vance has a moral spine.

"I heard last night he (Trump) called her (Harris) a bum," Beshear said. "If former President Trump wants to see a bum, he ought to look in the mirror. And here's what he'd see — multiple bankruptcies and 34 felony convictions. When JD Vance looks in the mirror he doesn't see any conviction at all."

In a gaggle with reporters after the speech, Beshear said Vance can't claim to be like the people of Kentucky, and that the GOP senator has turned on rural Americans from the Midwest and South.

"I'll admit I've only read parts of 'Hillbilly Elegy' because it made me so mad, how he was describing our people," Beshear said.

The Appalachian coal miners built the middle class, helped the United States win two world wars, Beshear said.

"For him to say it's their fault where they are right now, that they are somehow lazy, is entirely wrong," Beshear said. "It made me mad. Listen. I'm the governor of Kentucky. It's my job to stand up for our people, and now to use this as some type of contrived, what is his term, origin story — listen, he ain't from Kentucky, he's not from Appalachia, he doesn't share our Kentucky values, because we care about each other, and we never exploit each other."

In his speech Beshear joked that fictional superheroes like Batman, not real people, have origin stories. 

Beshear described himself as a pro union, pro public education and pro-choice governor.

He also salted his speech with endorsements of Harris for the presidency.

'The vice president gets it. She is tough and she is smart -- and that's going to make her a good president," Beshear said. "But she is also kind and has empathy, and that is going to make her a great president."

(Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )