Fancy Farm political picnic organizer Mark Wilson has seen some of Kentucky's best rivalries at the annual St. Jerome Catholic Church fundraiser.

In modern times, he said, Bluegrass titans such as Democrat Wendell Ford jousted with Republican Marlow Cook during the Watergate era.

Amid the Reagan Revolution a decade later, a Jefferson County executive named Mitch McConnell, a moderate Republican in those days, was running a guerrilla-style campaign against Democratic incumbent Dee Huddleston for U.S. Senate.

In 2003, Republican Ernie Fletcher and Democrat Ben Chandler showcased one of the closest gubernatorial battlesat the Graves County village.

"That was a big race," Wilson said.

Among those major rivalries, he said, the 2019 race between Republican incumbent Matt Bevin and Democratic challenger Andy Beshear is in the top five.

"I cannot vouch for how much they dislike each other; they might get along after they leave here at 4 o'clock, but it’s obvious from TV there isn’t much love between the two of them," he said.

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As Bevin and Beshear, the state's attorney general, prepare to take the stage at Fancy Farm on Saturday, their respective campaigns are expressing confidence ahead of the pilgrimage to far-Western Kentucky. Both candidates believe they best represent the Purchase Region's values, but they are coming at it from different directions.

For Bevin, that means leaning heavily on social issues such as abortion while touting the state's multibillion-dollar investments and his relationship with President Donald Trump.

"I know Andy's going to talk a lot about how his family is from Western Kentucky, but he abandoned Western Kentucky the same way the Democratic Party did," Bevin campaign manager Davis Paine told the Courier Journal. "Their values now don't represent the people out there in rural Kentucky."

Beshear's campaign takes umbrage with that characterization, and says Kentuckians want to talk more about protecting public employee retirement benefits, Medicaid expansion and improving public schools.

"Andy's family has deep family roots right there in Western Kentucky, and if you look at past results, the Beshears have always run well there," said Eric Hyers, who is running Beshear's campaign. "And to us it's about values: faith, family and hard work. That's who Andy is, and I think his values are Western Kentucky's values."

More than four decades ago, the late Republican Gov. Louie B. Nunn once lamented how the GOP was outnumbered at Fancy Farm. He noted that if one Democrat "didn't get you, another will" and that newspaper reporters would write up how they "hoot and holler and yell for the Democrats" while Republicans are ignored.

“As a Republican, it’s not a very good place to go,” Nunn said.

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Those days are long gone for Democrats, who no longer hold the region's 1st Congressional District seat, and at the state level have only a handful of legislators.

In 2016, few Democrats showed up to the event and many were speculating the picnic would become a solely GOP affair.

But Beshear's campaign is hoping that can be turned around because of high name recognition in the region mixed with an emphasis on kitchen table issues.

Beshear will be making his third consecutive stop at Fancy Farm and appears eager to tussle with the governor. New polling from Morning Consult shows Bevin's approval rating has continued its trek into the negative.

"Excited to go to Fancy Farm," Beshear said in a June 27 tweet. "See you there, Matt Bevin."

Bevin isn't a fan of Fancy Farm's raucous hecklers and has skipped the event since 2016. He notoriously criticized the event while yelling over attendees when he ran for governor four years ago.

The governor's reelection team, however, is expressing confidence coming out of a successful special session in which the legislature approved his pension-relief bill for quasi-state agencies.

"I've been hearing a lot of stuff about how Democrats plan to 'take back Fancy Farm' this year, but that's going to be a bit difficult simply because there's not a Democrat legislator elected within 100 miles of Fancy Farm," Paine said.

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Bevin attended a private fundraiser in West Virginia for Trump last week, hours after the special session ended. Paine said there is no discussion or expectation the president, or Vice President Mike Pence, will be dropping in at the town of 500 people.

"We're going to run on our own record without just touting the relationship they have," Paine said. "But it is a significant benefit for Kentucky, because I've been sitting in the room when the president has called the governor and vice versa. They work well together, and clearly, by the jobs we've created, it is proof of that."

The Beshear campaign is keeping a hands-off approach in criticizing Trump. Instead, it will play up its candidate's rural roots — his father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, is from the region — ahead of Saturday.

Beshear plans to open his first field office of the general election in Paducah ahead of the annual picnic, according to campaign officials.

And the attorney general will promote his support among labor leaders and teachers, who have been waiting for years to take a bite at Bevin for his controversial comments aimed at them.

"To us and to Andy, the issues that really matter to people including in Western Kentucky are pensions, public schools, quality health care and good jobs," Hyers said. "These are all things this governor has failed miserably on and these are Andy's priorities that people in the Purchase Region really care about, and the candidate right on those issues is really going to do well there."

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Reporter Phillip M. Bailey can be reached at 502-582-4475 or pbailey@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/philb.