Tuesday, Matt Bevin (R) was elected the new Governor of Kentucky despite pre-election polling predicting he would lose. Bevin beat out Jack Conway (D) by nearly nine percent. In doing so, the Bluegrass State elected a Tea Party millionaire who has vowed to dismantle the ACA.
Bevin, who lost last year’s senate race to fellow Republican Mitch McConnell, piggy-backed his way to the governor’s office with an endorsement from McConnell.
Now that Bevin has been elected we should look at his extremist views that will play an important role in his governorship of Kentucky:
- Bevin strongly opposes LGBT rights, claiming that same-sex marriage could lead parents to marry their children. After a supreme court ruling Bevin came out and said that it was time to get the government out of the marriage business.
- He strongly opposes labor laws and wants to give complete power back to the employer and end collective bargaining between employers and their employees. He has also called minimum wage unconstitutional.
- He thinks that as governor he should be allowed to disregard the EPA and be able to compromise the environment.
- He wishes to destroy the ACA.
Like many of his fellow Republicans, Bevin has said that he will veto any bill that comes across his desk that involves the funding of the ACA. Even experts have called his proposal stupid because Bevin wants to get rid of the Kynect health exchange by using his executive authority, essentially so he can serve his own interests.
Outgoing governor Gov. Steve Beshear (D) said this about Bevin’s plan:
“There’s over 300,000 [Kentuckians that are on expanded Medicaid], and Matt Bevin is just going to take it from every single one of them — just because he doesn’t like the fact that President Obama was the one that got it passed.” Toward the end of the campaign, he appeared to hedge on this promise, saying that while Kentucky cannot afford to pay the state’s portion of the expansion, he will seek a waiver to reconfigure the program so no one is “kicked to the curb.”
The scariest thing is that Kentucky’s executive power will allow him to eliminate the program and change the face of Kentucky with just one stroke of a pen. Upon his inauguration, December 8th, Bevin might do just that.
For more on Bevin and his crazy plans for Kentucky, please see our previous coverage.
Image via Facebook: Matt Bevin’s Campaign Page
