Gov.-elect Matt Bevin Lashes Out at ‘Overtly Racist’ Cartoon

Kentucky Governor-elect Matt Bevin lashed out at Lexington Herald-Leader’s political cartoonist Joel Pett for this cartoon:

Bevin calls cartoon a ‘deplorable attack’ on his children, https://t.co/5r31eBPLkv #wave3news pic.twitter.com/eyz0kTeaEQ

— wave3news (@wave3news) November 20, 2015

Bevin and his wife Glenna adopted four Ethiopian children in 2012. They also had six biological children, but their oldest died in 2003 at the age of 17 in a car accident.

Shame on the Lexington @HeraldLeader for publishing a deplorable, overtly racist attack on my children. (1/2) — Matt Bevin (@MattBevin) November 19, 2015

The tone of racial intolerance being struck by the @HeraldLeader has no place in Kentucky and won’t be tolerated by our administration (2/2)

— Matt Bevin (@MattBevin) November 19, 2015

Pett claims it was not an attack on Bevin’s children. Instead, he used them as “props” to attack Bevin’s position on Syrian refugees. “Well, it’s important to point out that the cartoon was not about his children,” he said. “It was about him and his fear for Syrian refugees.The children were mere props in it, much the same way they were props in his campaign commercials.”

Pett also tried to make his case by writing that Bevin displayed his children in political ads and photo ops. He continued:

I did use the fact that he has children from another country in a piece designed to express outrage over a legitimate hot-button political issue. (Bevin used them in photo-ops and on TV commercials over the past two campaigns, but that’s another story.) I did this with my name signed to it, in a newspaper with a long history of tolerating and publishing opinions of all persuasions and on a page labeled “opinion.”

However, people on both sides of the aisle are coming to Bevin’s defense and voiced their belief his children should be off limits: 

This is reprehensible. The @heraldleader must apologize and enact consequences. Please @Rufus_Friday you can lead. https://t.co/U9PM6w49Zn

— damon thayer (@damon_thayer) November 19, 2015

This is wholly inappropriate, @heraldleader. You should acknowledge that and issue an apology. pic.twitter.com/NrbPctn7DC

— Whitney Westerfield (@KyWhitney) November 19, 2015

“Matt Bevin and I disagree on a lot and who knows what kind of Governor he will be, but his adoptions should be praised, not mocked,” stated radio host Matt Jones, a Democrat.