Kelly Craft’s disingenuous ploy to gain a foothold in the governor’s race

Kelly Craft is mak­ing a big splash in Kentucky pol­i­tics as she press­es to get greater name recog­ni­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the crowd­ed Republican May pri­ma­ry election.

Mrs. Craft is appar­ent­ly inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy and, also appar­ent­ly, expend­ing large sums of her own mon­ey in air­ing com­mer­cials across Kentucky TV markets.

In her first com­mer­cial, she tried to make a case for the toll that ille­gal drugs are tak­ing on Kentucky fam­i­lies with her “emp­ty seat at the table” com­mer­cial.  She was sub­se­quent­ly called out by sev­er­al reporters and com­men­ta­tors because she seemed to be sug­gest­ing that she — “as a moth­er” — had lost a child to drug use.

She lat­er tried to clar­i­fy the con­tent of the com­mer­cial by admit­ting that a mem­ber of her fam­i­ly, not a child, had dealt with drug addic­tion but had over­come the problem.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that Mrs. Craft is jump­ing into her cam­paign by uti­liz­ing so many of the old, tired, eva­sive, and dis­sim­i­lat­ing tac­tics that are the trade­mark of pol­i­tics today ... by all parties.

After her well-pub­li­cized vis­it to the U.S./Mexico bor­der, she pro­duced a com­mer­cial not­ing that “we may not be able to build a wall like this at Kentucky’s bor­der” and then mer­ri­ly goes on to exclaim that she will secure the Kentucky bor­der, pre­sum­ably against drug traffickers. 

Of course, she doesn’t say exact­ly how she plans to do this.  Are inter­state trav­el­ers going to have to look for­ward to drop gates and check­points at every high­way that cross­es from Kentucky into an adjoin­ing state?  It’s doubt­ful that those dri­ving along Interstate 75 would be very hap­py about hav­ing to stop at either Tennessee or Ohio before con­tin­u­ing their trip.  But she doesn’t spec­i­fy which bor­der needs to be “secure.” Kentucky bor­ders sev­en oth­er states; that’s a lot of checkpoints.

She might also be asked at some point which abut­ting state presents the most dan­ger to Kentucky, and whichev­er state is select­ed is like­ly to raise some degree of indig­na­tion among the res­i­dents there.

Mrs. Craft proud­ly points out to drug traf­fick­ers that “I’m com­ing after you!”  If she were to be elect­ed gov­er­nor, it seems like­ly that most Kentuckians would pre­fer that she uti­lize law enforce­ment agen­cies to take on that task (as they are already doing) rather than hav­ing their gov­er­nor don­ning a flak vest and heavy artillery and fac­ing off with well-armed drug lords.

By sug­gest­ing that “Beshear and Biden” are ignor­ing our bor­der prob­lems, she reveals a num­ber of things about her cur­rent campaign.

First, she is try­ing to erode Governor Beshear’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in the state by link­ing him with President Biden, whose rat­ings are much low­er here. That’s the age-old ploy of “guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion”.

Then she would seem to sug­gest that the Kentucky gov­er­nor has any influ­ence over what tran­spires at the U.S./Mexico bor­der.  Maybe she has some method of extend­ing her plans for the Kentucky/Tennessee-Virginia-West Virginia-Ohio-Indiana-Missouri-Illinois bor­ders.  If it’s such a great plan, why wait?  Perhaps Governor Abbott of Texas would like to know about it.

Lastly, Mrs. Craft is cater­ing to fear in her com­mer­cials, just as so many politi­cians do, cre­at­ing bogey­men and ignor­ing the myr­i­ad of oth­er every­day prob­lems which haunt people.

At the very least, relo­cat­ing Eastern Kentucky flood vic­tims, rebuild­ing Mayfield and oth­er tor­na­do-dev­as­tat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, get­ting broad­band into remote Kentucky areas, deal­ing with teacher short­ages and reten­tion, and con­tin­u­ing to cre­ate jobs in all areas of Kentucky should take an equal­ly promi­nent posi­tion on the stage of issues.

But then, those aren’t as glam­orous or as incite­ful, are they?