Andy Beshear prevails for attorney general

Democrat Andy Beshear, son of Gov. Steve Beshear, barely held off the Republican wave Tuesday night to capture the attorney general's race in an extremely tight election over Republican Whitney Westerfield.

Final totals reported by the secretary of state gave Beshear 50.1 percent of the vote to 49.9 percent for Westerfield.

The two candidates swapped the lead in the race as returns trickled in, and it wasn't until about 10 p.m. until Beshear took the stage at the Frankfort Civic Center to claim victory.

"In this race, we faced historic out-of-state opposition, but I never lost faith that Kentucky families would choose an attorney general committed to fighting for them," Beshear said in a victory statement.

The victory salvaged for Democrats a key statewide office - one that can be used to keep a governor of the opposite party in check. And the win came in Beshear's first bid for public office and 36 years after his father was elected to the same post in 1979.

And for Westerfield it was a rough defeat for a first-term state senator from Hopkinsville who is considered a rising star within Republican ranks.

He said Tuesday night in an interview he would likely ask for a recanvass of the vote, but acknowledged it was highly unlikely that would change the outcome.

"I'm proud of the race we ran. We ran a clean race...It was a non-name guy from Western Kentucky up against the machine, and we came daggone close."

The race was hugely expensive and nasty.

Beshear, 37, is a Louisville attorney with his father's former law firm Stites & Harbison. He said that if elected, he would champion the cause of Kentucky families by increasing programs within the attorney general's office to fight child abuse, drug abuse and consumer scams against the elderly.

Westerfield, 34, is a former prosecutor from Hopkinsville who was elected to the state Senate three years ago and immediately won appointment as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said his priorities as attorney general would have been to oppose overzealous federal and state regulators, increase efforts to combat "cyber crimes" and work closely with the legislature in developing policy.

Beshear came into the race with the advantage of a name his father made politically popular.

He launched his campaign two years ago, raising huge amounts of money through a network of state officials, state contractors, Steve Beshear appointees and big city law firms. By late October, he had raised about $3.5 million - a record for a campaign for attorney general and triple what Jack Conway raised in winning his re-election campaign four years ago.

Whitfield raised less than one-tenth of that amount, but his campaign was rescued by the super PAC of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which spent about $2.3 million on an ad campaign that linked Beshear with the policies of President Barack Obama, who is very unpopular in most of the state.

Beshear and the super PAC of the Democratic Attorneys General Association fired back with ads spotlighting a scathing job evaluation Westerfield got in his first year which said Westerfield often put personal interests over work with embarrassing notations such as “Pedicure vs. Arraignments.”

However, those ads were undercut by the person who wrote that evaluation, Democratic Christian County Commonwealth Attorney Lynn Pryor, who said in an interview Westerfield had been “a great prosecutor” on her staff.

Westerfield and Beshear also clashed over how the state ought to react to the refusal of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis to issue marriage licenses to gay couples based on her religious convictions in spite of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Westerfield said throughout the campaign that Davis did the right thing.

Attorney general campaign is expensive, nasty

He urged Steve Beshear to take steps – issuing an executive order or calling a special legislative session – to change the process of issuing licenses so clerks like Davis would no longer face the risk of being jailed.

Andy Beshear said the governor did not have the power to remedy the conflict by executive order and said a special session would waste taxpayer dollars because the legislature can act in January when it convenes in regular session.

Reporter Tom Loftus can be reached at (502) 875-5136 or by email at tloftus@courier-journal.com.

ATTORNEY GENERAL

100% reporting

Andy Beshear (D) 479,924 (50.1%)

Whitney Westerfield (R) 477,734 (49.9%)