Kentucky Republican Daniel Cameron decries pandemic stay-at-home rules he backed in 2020

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee for governor in 2023, has reportedly poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into television advertisements since April, including a spot attacking incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear over COVID-19 pandemic closures. But in a 2020 video, Cameron praised the very safety rules he now brags about suing to stop.

In an April campaign ad that makes no mention of the pandemic, Cameron tells viewers:

The very first freedom in our Constitution is the freedom of religion. But Gov. Beshear ignored the Constitution and shut churches down. So I took him to court and fought to reopen churches, so we could come together for worship. Kentucky deserves a governor who respects our laws and our freedoms, a governor who knows only liberty creates prosperity and only faith can keep us strong. I’m Daniel Cameron. That’s exactly the kind of governor I will be.

NBC News reported in April that Cameron’s first campaign ad buy alone totaled more than $431,000 for cable and broadcast airtime.

Beshear, who is running for a second term this November, issued emergency orders in March 2020 that temporarily closed nonessential businesses and encouraged people to stay home if possible to curb the spread of the coronavirus. More than 80% of governors across the country, both Democrats and Republicans, issued similar orders in their own states, with the encouragement of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Though Trump never issued a national stay-at-home order, he sought to claim credit in May 2020 for pandemic shutdowns across the nation. “And then, one day they said, ‘Sir, we’re going to have to close it,’” he told Fox News. “I said, ‘What are you talking about, closing it?’ Nobody ever heard that. ‘We’re going have to close it.’ And we did the right thing. We saved — I think we saved millions of lives.”

Days later, Trump told reporters: “We had to close it down. It was an artificial closing. We had to just close it down. Never happened — a thing like that never happened before. We did the right thing.”

A Cameron spokesperson did not immediately respond to an American Independent Foundation inquiry for this story.

But in a livestream event on April 10, 2020, Cameron endorsed the COVID-19-related closures, specifically acknowledging the lack of in-person religious gatherings.

Hey everybody, this is Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Look, as we observe Good Friday and Easter weekend, I know a lot of us are disappointed or discouraged by the fact that we’re not going to be able to celebrate in person with our families or our church communities in the ways that we’ve done traditionally. I know I’m certainly disappointed by the fact that I’m not going to be able to celebrate with my church family, Sojourn Midtown in Louisville. We’ve been asked to make a lot of sacrifices during the period of this pandemic, but I’ve been so proud of the way that Kentuckians have stepped up to help slow the spread and to flatten the curve as it relates to COVID-19. I just want to provide a word of encouragement and a reminder that these changes are only temporary. The fact of the matter is that these actions that we are taking here in the commonwealth to flatten the curve are part of a larger effort being led by President Trump and others to save lives and to stop the spread of this terrible disease. This new framework that we are living under certainly will not last forever, and it’s my responsibility as the attorney general to ensure that it is temporary. Like many of our leaders, I am concerned about the long-term consequences and implications of COVID-19, but we’ve got to trust our health care experts to guide us on when it is safe to resume our normal lives.

Eight days after the broadcast, Cameron filed an amicus brief in a federal court case in support of allowing a church to hold a drive-in service. On May 6, he joined another federal lawsuit challenging restrictions on in-person religious gatherings. In a press release, he called the temporary orders unconstitutional.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.