Ever since I moved to New York, I’ve become accustomed to watching people’s eyes glaze over when I tell them I went to Indiana University. Many of these East Coast dilettantes who went to Yale or NYU, even some of my friends, cannot point to Indiana on a map. I’ve learned that New Yorkers all have a very different idea of what constitutes the Midwest. My home state borders Kentucky to the south and has plenty of cultural similarities with the Commonwealth. Fried chicken, gravy, and corn are staples throughout Indiana, but especially when you drive south through the hills. I grew up in Mike Pence’s Indiana; I was very aware of what it meant to live in a “red state.” Of course, I had a complicated upbringing, but I tell people they can’t talk shit about the Midwest unless they’ve lived there; These states are diverse. Many kinds of people call the region home.

For Governor Andy Beshear, this is familiar territory. He’s won big in Kentucky, a Republican-majority state, multiple times, rising through the ranks to become a potential Democratic presidential nominee for 2028. He’s yet to announce—and he’s not the only in the area running on an anti-Trump agenda—JB Pritzker seems potentially poised to run too. It’s a crowded race, and there’s a divide between the far and center left. Who will pull the party further? Alexandria O’Casio Cortez seems to be entertaining a run, and it seems Kamala Harris may try her luck again, despite the previous failure of her last-minute entry during the war on Gaza. Gavin Newsom remains a front-runner too. Early as it is, Andy Beshear, a lesser-known candidate who has only recently entered the spotlight, has released his memoir-cum-platform, too, called Go and Do Likewise.

Beshear lies somewhere in the middle among his fellow Democratic hopefuls. He may admire Zohran Mamdani, but he’s not a socialist. He may believe in liberal ideals like accessible healthcare for all and minority rights, but he has some critiques for mainstream MSNBC-loving liberals whose rhetoric abandons the working class. “Not thinking about health care as essential to rural America is not understanding how the economy works,” Beshear told The New Republic last year, before emphasizing affordability as the defining issue that concerned his rural constituents. He believes in protections against climate change, but thinks it is just as important to create new jobs in rural Kentucky and protect farmers from tariffs. He wants a ceasefire in Gaza, but believes Israel is a “critical ally” to the United States and has yet to use the term “genocide” to describe what’s going in Palestine. The author of a profile on Beshear put it this way while reflecting on his Christian faith for Vogue: “But as devout as Beshear is, I note an equally fervent faith in the power of pragmatism.” While some more provocative ideologues like Jennifer Welch and Hasan Piker have become spokespeople for the left, the path seems clear for a more stringent liberal like Beshear. He emphasizes social rights while still appealing to some mainstream Democrats. His local wins have already shown how Democrats can win votes “anywhere.” His upset victory has been heralded as a way forward for the left to win red states and seats—even if he barely won. Sometimes squeaking by is the only option.

Sometime last year, Beshear started receiving the profile treatment in the mold of a Kennedy. It was the black-and-white photos in Vogue that first caught my attention. He seemed like he was trying to seem like a Real American Man, relatable and folksy, with a clear, calm, empathetic, rational plan for the country. In an interview with Tyler Foggatt for The New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast, he spoke about red-state electability and the economy. Now, as Beshear returns for a new press cycle, he’s going after Trump: “He doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution,” he told MS NOW.

While Beshear wants the Democrats to be more than the party of #resistance, his memoir spends a fair amount of time differentiating his faith and politics from the current president’s crass, hawkish version of Christianity. He even nicknames his political foe Matt Bevin “Trump Lite.” According to Beshear, Bevin practices “Us” and “Them” politics and would rather die than admit he’s wrong. In short, he’s a bully—like Trump himself. In Go and Do Likewise, this tactic stands out. Trump is front and center by page two, scrunched between Bible verses and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Later, Beshear points out that “Trump throws Gatsby parties with his billionaire friends, while Jesus hung out with the exact opposite.” He implies that “Now go and do likewise,” the command at the end of Jesus’s story, “means treating all people as people of God—not dividing the country by party, race, ethnicity, or even sexual orientation.” Empathy, he argues, is “neither liberal nor conservative.” They “certainly aren’t woke—a word that has become a pejorative to some people.” Moving beyond the lingo while still embracing its zeitgeist, he extolls us to “Make America Kind Again.”

For Beshear, the truth is that community is all around us. We don’t have to like our neighbor to care about them. Go and Do Likewise is full of Good Samaritans who don’t ask about pronouns in the face of a flood; they just get to helping their neighbors. It’s a value he sees everywhere he travels in Kentucky. “This is what our faith should teach us—that our own comfort does not have to come at another’s expense,” he writes.

This was not the version of faith that I grew up with; I am more familiar with JD Vance’s vision of the world—preaching one thing and practicing another all with a stern grip on right and wrong. Beshear notes that many Republicans cast faith in “militaristic terms,” rather than as the work of a beloved community. His brand of Christianity is not to make a Christian nation but to inspire through his faith. “God-talk is easy,” he says. “Living it out consistently is tough.”

As the former attorney general of Kentucky, Beshear fought for the rights of the many rather than the few. Even when it wasn’t politically expedient. He wanted everyone to be able to get healthcare and vaccines—including those with preexisting conditions and in rural, underserved areas. Beshear slowly unspools these victories over the course of the book: his achievements as a lawyer, his father’s own legal wins and political aspirations. As attorney general, Beshear took on opioid companies, winning settlements for those who had become addicted to pain pills. When talking about such cases, he likes to be clear. He doesn’t like to use the phrase “substance abuse disorder” but “addiction.” For Beshear, it’s important to use the language of his constituents. He wants to be the kind of candidate you can envision yourself having a beer with and shooting the shit. He’s certainly easier to imagine having a gab session with than Newsom or Harris.

“Candidates don’t sound like normal human beings when they use terms like ‘food insecurity’ when they should say people are hungry,” he writes. “I talked to people, not down to them.” He prefers to say why he is doing something rather than merely use empty rhetoric. Of course, that’s much easier on a state level than a national one, even if Beshear has already faced intense criticism from Republicans for his pro-choice and pro-trans stances. He even took a picture with the infamous drag group Ladies of Perpetual Indulgence at a Pride event. Unlike Newsom, who has consistently folded on trans issues, Beshear has defended trans women in sports, calling the restrictions just plain mean. This folksy, simple down-home talk of right and wrong and acceptance strikes me as a similar recipe to Dolly Parton’s anti-politics politics. She wanted everyone to get along and have a chance at a happy life. The Golden Rule was more important than partisan divides.

Beshear includes plenty of stories about other people in his book, including a Democratic senator from Louisville whose trans son took his own life. “The response? No compassion. No empathy,” he writes in anger. He vetoed the bill that sought to keep trans people out of sports, something he continually gets flak for to this day even as he’s instead sought to move the conversation to things like jobs and affordability. “Don’t tell me the Democratic Party should stop fighting for the rights of all people. Just explain your authentic why, and then get back to focusing on the issues that touch all our lives on a daily basis.” I can’t imagine a Democrat in Indiana saying something like during my teen years: “The moment we fail to see our shared humanity is the moment we let people fall through the cracks.”