‘Moms are ready to rise up.’ Makenze Cameron launches women-led coalition for GOP nominee

As Makenze Cameron tells it, she wasn’t invested in politics before meeting her husband — who just so happened to be the Kentucky Attorney General.

But Thursday, the former educator and mom to a toddler took center stage as the campaign of Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee for governor, rolled out its “Moms for Cameron” coalition in Newport.

“Moms are ready to rise up and to fight back,” Makenze Cameron said after the event. “To fight for a good education system, to fight for safe streets and to fight for a better future for their kids.

Education and social issues — like the use of student pronouns in schools and gender-affirming care for transgender youth — have already played a prominent role in the Kentucky governor’s race this year.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, a former educator, released new ads earlier this week, highlighting teachers as “heroes” while slamming the attorney general as “anti-teacher” and an opponent of public education. The Democrats have tried to tie the opposing campaign to Matt Bevin, the former governor who notoriously made enemies of teachers, and narrowly lost his re-election bid to Beshear in 2019.

Coleman may have subtly responded to the Moms for Cameron event on social media

“I’m excited to attend Fancy Farm this weekend with @AndyBeshearKY!” she tweeted around the time the event drew to a close. “As the Commonwealth’s highest elected mom and teacher, I’ve got some things to say.”

What is Fancy Farm? Everything you need to know about the Kentucky political tradition

Groups backing the GOP candidate have hit Beshear hard for vetoing Senate Bill 150, a bill that, among other things, bans gender-affirming surgeries for minors. Education Commissioner Jason Glass said this week he is resigning over that bill, a decision celebrated by the Cameron campaign: “one down, one to go.” Opponents of the bill have denounced it as one of the “worst” and most “extreme” anti-trans bills in the nation, while proponents, including the attorney general, have argued it’s about protecting children.

Makenze Cameron’s message aligned with those points, but the former elementary teacher’s delivery stands in stark contrast to the attack ads on Beshear from groups backed by the Republican Governors Association, with the dark shading on images of the ad’s subject, bold fonts and ominous music that have come to typify negative political ads.

“What we’re seeing in the classroom is ... some of these ideas being filtered in,” she said. “I saw Black Lives Matters protests in tasks for 8-year-olds. I saw students having to color dresses on boys, on cutouts, at my school that I taught at. This is not some ideas that people are saying is not happening. I saw it first-hand.”

The initiative has already garnered the public support of Kelley Paul, the wife of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, and State Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, was in attendance Thursday.

“I am a mom, and family is the number one reason I ran for state senate. Cameron, in the words of Makenze and Daniel, the Cameron family is running for governor, so I want to continue to reinforce that message,” Funke Frommeyer said. “We are here fighting for our families. It’s desperate. And guess what? We’re fighting for our teachers because our teachers are fighting for our families, but they’ve been put in a terrible spot.”

Funke Frommeyer said she was a co-sponsor of Senate Bill 150 because she believes “parents need a voice.”

“I believe kids need to be first, and they’ve not been put first; some new strange social agenda has become the primary concern,” she said. “Parents need space, and a runway, to help their kids through those confusions, those challenges, those questions about their own sexual health and well-being — but they don’t need to be changed. They need to be loved and built up, without regard to sex and race.”

Event attendee Mirna Eads, who is chapter chair of Campbell County Moms for Liberty, said she believes Cameron will hold her husband to his promises and make sure that parental rights are upheld.

“He’s definitely for parental rights. He’s definitely for kids. Going back to education and learning, reading, writing, arithmetic,” Eads said. “We’ve got to get reading scores up like yeah, Andy Beshear’s education plan is to make sure that our kids stay dumb, and learn about what sex they want to identify as, rather than, what do they want to be when they grow up?”

The Beshear campaign has vehemently denied that he would allow gender-reassignment surgery for trans kids — and even released an ad articulating that point to voters.

No LGBTQ groups in the state took issue with banning such surgeries for minors. Instead, their opposition was based on other provisions of the bill, like the parts that would allow teachers to misgender their students and the ban on puberty blockers.

Also on Thursday, the American Academy of Pediatrics board voted to maintain its support for gender-affirming care, but did so with the caveat that there should also be a systemic review of such treatments.

The Cameron event also drew a handful of protesters, including Ron Turner, a Newport resident and former children’s librarian, who held a “trans rights!” sign.

“We’re here to support queer kids,” he said. “We’re here to support the family of Breonna Taylor. We’re here to support immigrants. We’re here to support everyone that MAGA Republicans want to leave behind.”

Turner said it seems the Cameron campaign is “doubling down” on a losing message.

“Kelly Craft ran on an anti-queer platform, and she lost in a landslide,” Turner said. “Ron DeSantis made the same thing, and now he’s struggling and may not even make it to the end of the primary. Why are we doubling down on policies that have clearly failed?”