Daniel Cameron (American politician) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Daniel Cameron
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Official portrait, 2021
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| 51st Attorney General of Kentucky | |
| In office January 6, 2020 – January 1, 2024 Acting: December 17, 2019 – January 6, 2020 |
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| Governor | Andy Beshear |
| Preceded by | Andy Beshear |
| Succeeded by | Russell Coleman |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Daniel Jay Cameron
November 22, 1985 Plano, Texas, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouses |
Elizabeth Cameron
(m. 2016; div. 2017)Makenze Evans
(m. 2020) |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | University of Louisville (BS, JD) |
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. 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 also the Republican nominee in the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial election, losing to Democratic incumbent 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. 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. In September 2020, he was among the final 20 additions to President Donald Trump's updated list of his potential Supreme Court nominees.
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 Beshear's COVID-19 restrictions.
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Early life and education
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 Senator Mitch McConnell scholarship to attend the University of Louisville, at which point he met McConnell for the first time. 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.
Early career
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.
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.
In 2017, Cameron returned to Louisville and joined the law firm Frost Brown Todd as a senior associate in government affairs.
Attorney General of Kentucky
Campaign
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.
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. 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).
Attorney general
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 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.
Pandemic
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.
In an interim order in July 2020, the Kentucky Supreme Court blocked efforts by Cameron and lower courts to nullify the executive orders, pending the state Supreme Court's own review. In November 2020, the Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of Beshear's emergency coronavirus executive orders.
In December 2020, an initial ruling by Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove of the Federal District Court in Frankfort, Kentucky (for whom Cameron had clerked for two years), found in favor of Cameron in his lawsuit challenging Beshear's order to temporarily close all elementary, middle, and high schools to combat the pandemic. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the trial court's opinion and held against Cameron.
Bankers association lawsuit
In November 2022, the Kentucky Bankers Association, which includes 150 banks doing business in Kentucky, sued Cameron in Franklin Circuit Court. Cameron had the case removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky where it appeared before Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, for whom Cameron was previously a law clerk. The court said Cameron displayed "amazing and disturbing broad overreach" by overstepping his legal authority and that Cameron lacked the authority to demand detailed information from banks as part of an investigation into their environmental lending practices, calling it a big government intrusion on private businesses that could create "an ongoing state surveillance system." Ballard Cassady, CEO of the association, said: "Kentucky banks must be allowed to make good business decisions for their bank, their customers and community without worrying about how they relate to broader ideological or political goals."
National politics
After his election as Kentucky attorney general, Cameron was seen by some analysts as a rising star in the Republican Party. He spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention on August 24, 2020. In September 2020, Cameron appeared on a 20-person shortlist of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees by President Donald Trump.
2023 gubernatorial campaign
Cameron announced his candidacy for governor on May 11, 2022. He criticized Beshear's emergency orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump endorsed Cameron's gubernatorial bid. In the Republican primary, Cameron defeated challengers Kelly Craft and Ryan Quarles. On July 19, 2023, Cameron announced State Senator Robby Mills as his running mate for Lieutenant Governor. Cameron is the first major-party African-American nominee for governor in the Commonwealth's history. He ran against Andy Beshear in the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial election on November 7, 2023, losing to the incumbent governor.
Personal life
Cameron's 2016 marriage to Elizabeth Cameron ended in divorce the following year. He married a second time on July 31, 2020, to Makenze Evans, a 27-year-old schoolteacher. They had their first child on January 5, 2022.
