UPDATE: Citing Washington, surveys, Beshear responds to GOP ‘priority’

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WTVQ) – A leading Kentucky lawmaker says Republicans were given a mandate by voters to limit the Democratic governor’s executive powers in times of emergency.

But Gov. Andy Beshear, citing polls taken just before the election and exit polls of voters the day of the election disputed those claims and said instead the partican bickering is living out the warning George Washington issued about political parties during his farewell address in 1796.

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer said Wednesday last month’s election was a “cry for help” from Kentuckians upset with Gov. Andy Beshear’s handling of the pandemic. Republicans expanded their lopsided majorities in the House and Senate.

Thayer says voters want lawmakers to limit the governor’s emergency powers.

Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley says it’s “unfortunate” the governor is being attacked when he’s “focused on defeating COVID-19 and saving lives.” Next year’s legislative session convenes in January.

When asked about Thayer’s comments during his daily briefing Thursday, Beshear at first said he was flattered Thayer, an ardent supporter of President Trump, said the election wasn’t about Trump but rather was about Beshear.

And to counter Thayer’s claims, he cited polls — one by Spectrum News and one by the New York Times — taken at the election which showed between 63 and 66 percnt of the public approved of the way Beshear was handling the coronavirus crisis.

Citing Washington, Beshear said the disconnect by political parties is bordering on dangerous and partisanship is “crazy,” but the state shouldn’t change laws or the way in confronts challenges simply because one branch of government is controlled by one party and the other is controlled by another.

The goal should be what is best for the state, he noted.

In his farewell address warned that political parties could become more concerned about their own power than the greater good of the public. He said:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”