Kentucky really dropped the ball a few months ago by choosing establishment GOP leader Mitch McConnell over small government conservative Matt Bevin for their U.S. Senator. Well listen up Kentucky — you have a chance to redeem yourself! Matt Bevin is running for governor and talked about the campaign on radio this morning.
Below is a rush transcript of the interview:
GLENN: Kentucky, even though you're dead to me --
PAT: Could be somewhat slightly redeemed here.
GLENN: Could be. You could be mostly dead to me.
PAT: Right.
GLENN: If you would elect Matt Bevin for governor of the state of Kentucky. The primary is happening now and Matt Bevin happens to be on the phone with us. A friend of the program. A successful businessman. And a man that should have replaced Mitch McConnell. But Kentuckians decided to have, I don't know, too much bourbon.
PAT: Look at the fruits of that labor already.
GLENN: Working out well, Kentucky, isn't it? I'm sorry. Matt Bevin, welcome to the program.
MATT: It is good to be with you guys. It really is. You're bringing me down a little. Bringing me down.
GLENN: No, no. I don't want to bring you down.
MATT: We need you here in Kentucky. Don't give up on us yet. Don't give up on us yet.
GLENN: So what's happening with the primary? And why are you running for the -- I mean, I think you should have moved out of Kentucky. Just saying.
MATT: You know, I love this state. I say that not for gratuitous reasons. I just do. It's a beautiful part of the world. We're better than we sometimes appear to be, politically and otherwise. We have a lot of people here who care, not only about the direction of this state, but of this country. And it's a function of, we've got energize that base. You know this. You fight this battle every day. We have to get the people to care about these issues to actually come out to the polls.
GLENN: I know. Well, I will tell you this, there's a guy who used to live on the court, St. James Court in Louisville. I too love Kentucky. It's a great state. And if you want to, if you really want to change things, look at what -- look at what Scott Walker has done for Wisconsin. I mean, he has fundamentally transformed that state. You just start putting the correct principles in, and jobs come rolling in and your debt goes away. And things just turn around.
MATT: Absolutely. The missing ingredient is courage. We don't have enough people with political courage who are willing to step forward and take on the odds that seem insurmountable. He is a man who has time and again done things that people said could never and would never happen in that state. And he has not accepted that as an answer. And it's no different in Kentucky. If we do things that people say can't be done, but we do them anyway because we know they must be done, I know we can prevail. I know we can.
PAT: Matt, you've been officially in the campaign for how long now?
MATT: About six weeks. So I am just in the mix. I have not yet run any media of any sort whatsoever. And even so, we are statistically within the ranks of the frontrunner. I mean, we've been first or second in every single poll that has been done, even before I got into this race. So I'm delighted at where we are.
PAT: Yeah. The latest poll we saw shows you right behind the leader, whose name I don't even know. But that's amazing if you haven't even started really running ads or doing any media yet. That's --
GLENN: What's the difference between you and the other guy?
MATT: I mean, there's three other guys in the mix. The one you're referring to is a businessman. He's a good man. He really is. He has spent millions of dollars already on this race and has been officially in the race for over a year and he's barely ahead of me.
GLENN: Wow.
PAT: So this is good.
MATT: This is not because there's anything wrong with him. I don't think he evokes a sense of strong leadership. He doesn't give people a great sense of confidence. He's a good man. But I don't think he's the right solution. He's always a man who is sometimes a little squishy as it relates to taxes and things. He's sometimes there and sometimes not there. I'm far and away the most conservative and the most liberty-minded and have consistently been so throughout my entire life of anyone in this race.
GLENN: Where is Kentucky on Common Core?
MATT: This is another issue. I mean, we have most people saying they're opposed to it. I personally am very strongly opposed to it. Just last night, I spent a fair bit of time with a mutual friend of ours. Heidi Huber, who is just a very strong friend. What they're doing in Iowa right now is encouraging. They're on the cusp of encouraging their state to remove themselves from this in ways that are powerful and could be a great example for Kentucky. I have called in my Blueprint for a Better Kentucky to repeal Common Core in its entirety. And I've made that unequivocal from the first time I first ran for Senate to now and even before that time.
GLENN: And you also are trying to -- you want to move Kentucky into a right-to-work state.
MATT: Absolutely. We must. We're the only state in the south that does not have right to work legislation. It's killing us. People are passing us by simply because they cannot check that box. We cannot afford fiscally financially to pass --
GLENN: I'll tell you, Kentucky is -- I really like Kentucky. Kentucky is a geographically, just in a perfect little spot. It's really beautiful. Really beautiful. The people are very friendly. It's still in the South. And yet it's -- you know, it's obviously on the Mason-Dixon Line. And it has everything going for it. I mean, it's a great place to locate a company. Honestly, I walked through Louisville and thought to myself, you know, when we were getting ready to move down to Texas, I saw Louisville and I thought, you know, some of these old buildings down here, I'd love to take an old warehouse and just build studios in Louisville. Because it's a great place to live.
MATT: If I have my ability to become governor and then ultimately effect the changes that I know we can make, I'd love to attract you back. I'll tell you, you'd rather be here in July and August than Texas. I can tell you that.
GLENN: No, Matt. Not a chance. If you were senator, there was a chance. But Kentucky is dead to me now.
MATT: No, no, no.
[...]
STU: When is the primary, Matt?
MATT: The primary is May 19th. Again, we have four people running on the Republican side. So it's unusual in Kentucky. It's usually the Democrats that fight for the nomination, and then some poor chump gets put up on the Republican side. But this is a state that is shifting. It's changing. And that's good.
So conservatives are starting to have their voices heard. There are still far more Democrats than Republicans. But I need Republicans in Kentucky that are listening, if you care about the future of Kentucky, pay close attention to this race. I would certainly be grateful, of course, for people's support. But I'd rather they make an informed decision and that they go to the polls actively and intentionally, and I think that they will look at our campaign --
My running mate Jenean Hampton is extraordinary. She's a woman who grew up in inner city Detroit. Her mother and father got divorced when she was seven. She was the youngest of four girls. Her mother had an eighth grade education. No one in her family had ever gone to college. She paid her own way through school working full-time at General Motors. Got a degree in Industrial Engineering. Then joined the Air Force. Seven years active duty military, including a deployment to the Gulf War. Got out. Went into the private sector for 20 years, working her way up to being a plant manager at a Fortune 500 packaging company. Got an MBA along the way. Is conservative to the core. Knows why she's conservative.
The fact that she's a black female puts her in remarkably select company in the state of Kentucky's Republican Party. And she knows why she believes what she believes. She's liberty-minded and an extraordinary candidate as this state has ever seen. There's never been an African-American ever run for lieutenant governor or governor in the history of this state. So she brings to this equation a level of confidence and knowledge of her principles and what it means to not play the victim.
She has had 1,000 opportunities in her life to make excuses for why she could have been or would have been something else. And she has seized the very principles that this nation was built on for herself and for her life and is an example to others in ways that nobody else could begin to replicate. She's extraordinary.
STU: Are we voting for her, or?
GLENN: Yeah, I wonder why she's not running for governor.
MATT: I know. The ticket is probably backwards. But --
GLENN: Let me ask you this, Matt -- what are race relations like especially with the shooting that happened in Ferguson? What is happening in Kentucky? How are things in Kentucky?
MATT: You know, I was just with a bunch of police chiefs this morning. I spent my morning with about 40 different police chiefs. And they were talking about that and others. It's -- race relations -- specifically, we're a state that's 88.2 percent white. We're predominantly white.
Race relations tend to be more an issue in the urban areas as might be affected, but frankly ours is a state that could probably stand to pay a little more attention to the fact that we are one nation under God, indivisible. This is what made our nation great. It's what we must have to be great going forward.
Part of why I put this ticket forward is we recognize Kentucky. Jenean and I are Kentucky. We're black, we're white, we're male, we're female. We're from the city. We're from the country. We're two individuals who both grew up below the poverty level, but have been blessed to live the American dream.
And, to me, if there's anything that will enhance the level of dialogue between races in this nation, it's for people to recognize that we are indeed one nation under God. And you've met my family. My family alone happens -- I have black children, I have white children. But I don't see them that way. They're my children.
GLENN: I have to tell you something. You just keep having more children. You have like 34 children. Eventually, your kids can just go to the polls and elect you.
MATT: We're a few years away. Honestly, we only have one seat left in the 12-passenger van so I think we're done.
GLENN: Matt, give me the web address.
MATT: It's MattBevin.com. It hasn't changed. Pat, I know you've been waiting to say that. M-A-T-T B-E-V-I-N dot-com. People can go and see my plan for a better Kentucky. It's a simple plan. It's a fiscally responsible plan. And I'll tell you, anything your listeners can do inside and outside of Kentucky, there's three races in the country in 2015, and only one has the ability to change the governorship in a statehouse, and that's Kentucky. And I'd be grateful -- if people think that having a 32nd Republican Kentucky governor in solving this nation's problems from the bottom up, is going to be the answer, as opposed to from Washington, I'd be --
GLENN: Well, I will tell you that we wish you would have replaced what's-his-face? McConnell. But, you know, another path to the White House, quite honestly, is through the governorship. And I'm not saying that's what you're doing it for or anything else, but I will tell you, look at what happened to Scott Walker. He's changed the dynamics of that state. And that is a very progressive state. He has changed the people's lives for better. And he could be a presidential candidate. So we're big supporters of yours, Matt. And we appreciate it. And best of luck to you. Thank you.
MATT: Thanks for having me on twice. I appreciate it.