KY-GOV: Republican in-fighting gets heated in the most important governor's race in 2023
A Republican mega-donor is opening her wallet in an effort to win the Kentucky governorship — spending millions laying waste to the Republican frontrunner in an increasingly bitter primary.
Kelly Craft, a Trump-era United Nations ambassador and first-time candidate, and her allies have bombarded Kentucky airwaves with ads yoking her better-known opponent, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, to former President Barack Obama and portraying him as a “soft establishment teddy bear.” And that’s to say nothing of the hits on him focused on coal and crime — with one ad from a Craft-supportive super PAC drawing a fairly tenuous connection from Cameron to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a bogeyman in the GOP for his prosecution of former President Donald Trump in New York.
The spending by Craft has upended GOP politics in Kentucky, rocketing someone who was almost entirely unknown in the commonwealth outside of major donor circles to the top tier of the primary heap.
“Craft has bought herself into a two person race,” said Scott Jennings, a well-known Republican operative in the state who has remained neutral in the contest. “The question is ‘is there enough runway left?’”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/19/kentucky-gov-kelly-craft-00092701
