“News of the recanvass outcome was yet another sign of Bevin’s remarkable political comeback. One year ago he was soundly defeated by incumbent Senator Sen. Mitch McConnell in a divisive and vitriolic Republican primary. “
Great spin but wrong. He got less votes in the gubentorial primary then he did in the senate primary. A lot less votes.
You need more votes than any other candidate. The total # of numerical votes is irrelevant. Turnout was way lower and it was a race with 3 major candidates rather than 2 like the Senate race (plus a 4th who got 7%).
I’m not a big fan of this guy but this certainly qualifies as a remarkable comeback, going from a terrible Senate challenger who only got any votes at all by default because many on the right hate Mitch McConnell, to impressing people that didn’t like him before and beating a popular statewide official (James Comer) who by all logic should have been the unanimous consensus choice for the gubernatorial nomination.
You could certainly argue he’d have a lost a runoff with Comer (he did get a slightly lower PERCENTAGE of the vote than he did in the Senate race) but we can’t know that for sure. The third guy, a RINO named Heiner, went hard negative against Comer, he and his supporters may have backed Bevin in a runoff.