Kentucky’s six-month-long debacle with newly-elected Governor Matt Bevin continues to unravel, and a new poll shows that the approval rating for Bevin is one of the worst in America.
Of course, Matt Bevin has done a few good things while in office, although many would beg to differ. For example, according to Lex18 , Matt Bevin signed an anti-bullying bill around May 5, despite the fact that he himself has been accused of being bull-headed.
Now, a mid-May report from Morning Consult states that Matt Bevin has one of the lowest approval ratings in the country, and there are only three other states worse than Kentucky: Kansas, Connecticut, and Michigan.
Salon went as far as calling Matt Bevin an “oligarch-turned governor” around May 11, accused Bevin of “laying ruin” to Kentucky and compared him to Florida’s Rick Perry and Illinois’ Bruce Rauner.
How did Matt Bevin earn this low 33 percent approval rating and oligarch status? There are several issues that constituents in Kentucky have with Matt Bevin, and they are not all related to hot-button issues like going against the bathroom laws or undermining Planned Parenthood.
Instead, there are many nuts and bolts issues that lawmakers have with Matt Bevin that give voters in Kentucky the red flag that Bevin is not playing governor with a full deck.
For instance, around March 7, Matt Bevin went to the empty Kentucky House Chambers and talked about how lazy they were at passing the budget… despite the fact that the lawmakers in question were on capitol property working on the budget.
In response to Matt Bevin’s absurd video, Representative Sannie Overly, chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party, stated the following, according to WKYT .
“Either Gov. Matt Bevin doesn’t know how the process works, or he was trying to distort the truth and mislead people with his video today on social media… While Gov. Bevin was trying to be the star of his own phony reality show at the wrong place, House lawmakers were heading to work in the Capitol Annex, where committee meetings happen every day during session.”
Other hits against Matt Bevin include him cutting the education budget drastically, according to the Washington Post , but giving $18 million in tax breaks to help Ken Ham’s Creationist Museum build an ark, according to Lexington Herald Leader .
When the National Rifle Association (NRA) came to Louisville in May, Matt Bevin talked about “guns and religion” according to the Gospel Herald , and stated the following in his speech to the crowd.
“We owe it to our children, and that’s going to require sacrifice from us in the form of many things… We are under assault from regulation and liberal ideology. We are the ones who have to stand in the gap; this is our time.”
Adding to the list of damaging things Bevin has done to the state is dismantling the Kynect/Medicaid system that links Kentuckians to other important poverty-prevention services with little reassurance the replacement, Benefind, will ever actually work, according to Kentucky Forward .
Matt Bevin has also pulled the funding for or fired a number of important departments. In particular, on top of Kentucky being one of the most impoverished places to live in America, according to the New York Times , Louisville has some of the worst air quality in America, according to WVXU and CBS . Regardless, Matt Bevin fired the Environmental Quality Commission director, Arnita Gadson, according to a January report from WYMT .
Where is the plot to this Kentucky political horror movie going? On May 25, Matt Erwin, a contributor for the Courier-Journal , suggested that Matt Bevin should join fellow oligarch, Donald Trump, as Vice President because they are so similar. (It should also be noted that if Matt Bevin became Vice President, it would leave Kentucky’s governor position open.)
However, what is not possible, as previously reported by the Inquisitr , is for Matt Bevin to be part of a recall vote or impeached despite the fact that his constituents feel that he is steering the state of Kentucky into murky waters.
A judge recently declared that Matt Bevin had the authority to slash university budgets, according to WDRB , and this has also left the people of Kentucky feeling that Bevin is unstoppable.
On the other hand, if the FBI or another agency find Matt Bevin guilty of fraud or corruption, according to WBUR , Bevin’s reign of terror would come to a close.
The Lexington Herald Leader stated near the end of April that Attorney General Andy Beshear “is asking the commission to investigate whether the Bevin administration, which took office in December, used political contribution histories as grounds to fire non-merit, or politically appointed, state employees.”
So far, no official decisions have been made in the investigations against Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.
[Picture by AP /Timothy D. Easley]