Concerned Kentuckians should be comforted to know that Attorney General Andy Beshear is advocating for Kentucky children and bipartisanship.

In an interview with the Kentucky Kernel’s editorial board, Beshear, a Democrat, called child sexual abuse an “epidemic” in Kentucky.

To combat these crimes, Beshear is teaming up with Kentucky first lady Glenna Bevin in a bipartisan effort to tackle the issue of child sex abuse.

The program will focus on new training for adults around Kentucky — health professionals, law enforcement, parents, teachers, and local sexual-abuse trainers.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” Beshear said. “For the longest time in child abuse training, we focused on the kids, who are the least powerful to actually prevent one of these assaults from occurring — so the training is starting to shift to focus on parents and teachers and others.”

Beshear has also been outspoken about his support for Kynect, Kentucky’s award-winning state-level health care marketplace set up after the Affordable Care Act. But Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is in the process of dismantling the program.

According to Beshear, 97 percent of Kentucky’s children now have health care because of Kynect and the expansion of Medicaid. Cutting Kynect will deeply hurt the future health of Kentucky.

“I don’t think whatever position their parents are in is their fault,” Beshear said. “Every child should get a chance to grow up healthy and get in a pattern of being healthy that will help them later in life.” 

Beshear is acting as the voice of reason in Frankfort by supporting Kynect, and he should use his attorney general powers to fight Bevin on this issue.

Kentucky politicians would be most successful by adopting Beshear’s philosophy: Check your party affiliation at the door. Issues are best resolved by honest evaluation — not party politics.

An honest evaluation led Bevin to propose a solution to the backlog of rape kits in Kentucky. Beshear also supports this issue and hopes to remind Kentuckians of the person behind every unprocessed kit.

“I’m really concerned that our use of the term ‘rape kit’ has the public thinking about this wrong,” Beshear said. “It makes them think about box on a shelf, when we’re talking about a victim.”

While there’s a new political climate in Frankfort with Republican Bevin at the reigns, Beshear appears determined to work across the aisle, with both the governor and the first lady, on matters that affect Kentucky citizens most.

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