Daniel Cameron (American politician)

A member of the Republican Party, Cameron was the first African American, and the first Republican since 1943, to be elected to the office.

He was the Republican nominee in the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial election, losing to incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear.

Born in Plano, Texas, Cameron moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky as a child.

He attended the University of Louisville for his undergraduate and legal education.

He was the first Republican elected to be attorney general of Kentucky since Eldon S. Dummit, who served from 1944 to 1948.

He is Kentucky's first African-American attorney general.

Daniel Jay Cameron (born November 22, 1985) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 51st attorney general of Kentucky from 2020 to 2024.

He was a redshirt freshman defensive back on the 2006 Louisville Cardinals football team, coming off the bench for limited playing time in the first two games.

He graduated from the University of Louisville with a B.S. in 2008.

In 2011, he earned a J.D. from the University of Louisville School of Law where he was president of the Student Bar Association.

Cameron was a law clerk for Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky for two years, from 2011 to 2013.

From 2013 to 2015, for 18 months he worked for the law firm Stites & Harbison.

Cameron worked as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove for two years, and was then legal counsel to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from 2015 to 2017.

From 2015 to 2017, Cameron served as legal counsel to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for whom Tatenhove himself had previously worked.

He was responsible for making sure that the office complied with Senate ethics rules, and helped shepherd the confirmations of conservative federal judges including Neil Gorsuch.

Following Republican former lieutenant governor Jenean Hampton, Cameron became Kentucky's second African-American statewide officer, and the first to be independently elected (given that Hampton had shared the 2015 gubernatorial ticket with Matt Bevin).

In 2017, Cameron returned to Louisville and joined the law firm Frost Brown Todd as a senior associate in government affairs.

Cameron ran in the 2019 Kentucky Attorney General election, receiving Trump's endorsement after the primary.

He won with 57.7% of the vote.

As attorney general, Cameron unsuccessfully challenged several of Governor Andy Beshear's COVID-19 restrictions.

Following the killing of Breonna Taylor, Cameron announced the decision of his office as special prosecutor not to charge the two police officers who had shot and killed her, leading to widespread protests against Cameron's decision.

Cameron was born in Plano, Texas.

He later lived in Alabama.

He was raised in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

His mother was a professor at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College, and his father owned a local coffee shop.

Cameron attended John Hardin High School in neighboring Radcliff.

Cameron was awarded a scholarship sponsored by Senator Mitch McConnell to attend the University of Louisville, at which point he met McConnell for the first time.

Cameron ran for Attorney General of Kentucky in 2019 and defeated State Senator Wil Schroder in the Republican primary by a margin of 132,400 (55.3%) votes to 106,950 (44.7%) votes.

After the primary, he was endorsed by President Donald Trump.

In the November 2019 general election, Cameron defeated the Democratic nominee, former attorney general Greg Stumbo, with 57.8% of the vote.

On December 17, 2019, Beshear signed an executive order appointing Cameron to serve the remainder of his term as attorney general.

Cameron was sworn into office by U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, for whom Cameron had clerked after graduating from law school.

In September 2020, he was among the final 20 additions to President Donald Trump's updated list of his potential Supreme Court nominees.

Cameron's term as attorney general was scheduled to begin on January 6, 2020, but incumbent Andy Beshear resigned the post on December 10, 2019, to facilitate his inauguration as Governor of Kentucky.

On March 27, 2020, Cameron called for halting abortions in Kentucky during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing it was an elective medical procedure that should fall under the statewide ban for the duration of the pandemic.

During the closing days of the legislative session, the Kentucky legislature voted to give the attorney general power to regulate abortion clinics, but the legislation was vetoed by Beshear.

Cameron initiated unsuccessful legal challenges to executive actions that Governor Beshear took to combat the spread of COVID-19.

In a court filing in July 2020, Cameron asked a state judge to invalidate all of Beshear's COVID-19 orders, and to bar the governor from issuing or enforcing any further COVID-19 order.

Cameron described his request as an attempt "to protect the rights of Kentuckians"; Beshear condemned Cameron's motion as "scary and reckless," and said it would endanger public health, lead to more deaths, and harm the economy.

Beshear noted that Cameron's filing called for the invalidation of executive action that required face masks in public places, imposed restrictions on public gatherings, expanded workers' compensation eligibility for workers who were under quarantine due to exposure to the virus, and the waiver of co-pays, deductibles, and other costs associated with COVID-19-related healthcare.