Republican Chuck Eddy spent Friday drumming up votes for Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman in Paducah.

Before he hit town, the founder of “Republicans for Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman” figured he’d knocked on 1,300 doors for the top of Team Blue’s ticket. Eddy braved a relentless sun and close to 90-degree heat to add close to 200 more.

Jennifer Smith, chair of the McCracken County Democratic party, goes canvassing in Paducah with Chuck Eddy, founder of the group “Republicans for Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman” (photo by Berry Craig)

“I’m not marching to a different drummer,” the Lexington retiree insisted. “I’m marching to the drummer I’ve always had.” (He marched in Paducah and its environs with a guide, Jennifer Smith, McCracken County Democratic chair.)

Eddy, a former call center employee, says he’s “a lifelong moderate Republican,” but admits that Republicans of his persuasion are rare. The GOP in Kentucky and elsewhere, he laments, has swerved even farther right, led by “the Pied Piper of Trump Tower.”

Eddy is an unapologetic Never-Trumper who bristles when he hears somebody pin the “populist” label on the president. “Calling a billionaire a populist is a crock,” he said.

Though Eddy didn’t vote for Trump, 62.5 percent of Kentuckians who went to the polls did. Gov. Matt Bevin is counting on a Trump bump to boost him over Beshear, the outgoing attorney general, on Nov. 5.

The governor won in 2015 with Jenean Hampton as his running mate. This time, Bevin chose a different partner, state Sen. Ralph Alvarado. Beshear chose Coleman, an educator.

Trump loves Bevin, and Bevin loves him back. (Alvarado is a Trump loyalist, too.) But Eddy senses a disconnect between the president and the governor, especially when he knocks on Republican doors.

He said some tell him they’re not voting for Bevin, period. “Others say they voted for Trump and are going to vote for him again, but not Bevin. They can’t stand Bevin.”

Eddy said the May GOP primary reflected divided GOP loyalties. Bevin managed just 52.4 percent of the vote against a trio of challengers, including state Rep. Robert Goforth.

Eddy is wearing out shoe leather for Beshear and Coleman only. “We don’t care who you voted for in 2016,” explained his Facebook group’s inaugural post. “We don’t care who you voted for in 2018. We have no opinion on the other statewide races in Kentucky. We don’t care who you vote for in 2020.”

He and his group just want to beat Bevin.

To that end, he prefers campaigning in GOP-leaning neighborhoods. Eddy sports a badge identifying him as a Republican volunteer for Beshear-Coleman.

He raises eyebrows and sometimes hackles when he introduces himself to GOP householders. He’s ever cheerful, no matter how he’s received.

Like most canvassers, he leaves a flier in the door if nobody’s home. But before he heads to the next house, he goes into a 15-second pitch for his candidate, just in case somebody is lurking behind the unopened door.

“Hi, this is Chuck Eddy,” he says. “I’m a Republican out canvassing for Andy Beshear, the Democrat for governor. Even though Bevin’s a Republican, he’s just not right for our state. So this year, I’m supporting a Democrat. Andy Beshear is better on health care and public education.”

Not surprisingly, many, if not most, Republicans rip him as a traitor and ridicule him as a loser. Eddy challenged Rep. Andy Barr of Lexington, a tea party-tilting Trump disciple, in last year’s primary and managed just a tad more than 16 percent of the vote.

“You liberal leftist loonie,” one detractor posted on the group’s Facebook page. “Go worship Karl Marx, commie.” Others have tagged him “a snake in the grass” and a “Rino,” meaning “Republican in Name Only.”

Another naysayer dismissed “Republicans for Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman” as “a PR stunt…to get attention for himself and the five people that voted for him in the primary for Congress.”

But Eddy is finding fans in GOP households and on his Facebook page. “As a registered Republican…I can in no way vote or support Matt Bevin!!,” posted one booster. “Name calling,” warned another, “…only fuels the fire to fight for Andy. I voted for Bevin 4 long years ago only to be burned by his lies and crooked ways. He’s no conservative or Christian. I will never fall for that phony ever again.”

Anyway, Eddy shrugs off the barbs from Bevinites and Trumpians. “I have not surrendered my party to them,” he said.

Nonetheless, he concedes that moderates like him “have pretty much been purged from the party. Eighty to 90 percent of the current governors and state lawmakers are hard-right Trumpians. But that doesn’t mean we can’t rid ourselves of that and go back to our history and do what’s right.”

Eddy dreams of a Kentucky GOP reborn in the spirit of moderates like Sens. John Sherman Cooper and Marlow Cook. “One of the things I don’t deny is having a rich fantasy life,” he said with a chuckle.

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