Q&A: Kentucky DEI fighter

Daniel J. Cameron, 39, is an attorney and Republican politician who served as Kentucky’s 51st attorney general from 2019 to 2024. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2023 and now serves as president and CEO of the 1792 Exchange, a nonprofit research organization. In February, Cameron announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate to replace outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell, who plans to leave office in early 2027. Here are edited portions of our April 16 conversation.

Tell me about your upbringing. At what point did you realize you were a conservative? I grew up in Elizabethtown, Ky. My parents owned a small business, a coffee shop, and I spent some time there ­making cappuccinos and lattes probably at way too early of an age. We view ourselves as Christians, before anything else; our identity is in Christ. And that was certainly what animated my parents. They believed in faith, community, and smaller government—getting government out of the way of business and not placing restrictions on faith and values. That’s how I found my way to conservatism: I was born in it. My mom often tells the story that the last Democrat she voted for was Jimmy Carter in 1976 and she has been voting Republican ever since.

You were elected as the first African American attorney general in Kentucky, a state where attorney general and governor are elected independently. What was it like serving as a Republican under Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear? I took the oath of office in December 2019 and found myself having to stand up for the Constitution pretty early on. We had a governor who shut down our churches and a lot of small businesses and told people they had to stay inside. Fortunately, we were able to go into court and get our churches reopened and got other parts of our state reopened as well. It was a challenging period, but I made those decisions to sue the governor based on the Constitution and based on ­preserving the constitutional rights of our citizens.

You also saw how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies shaped not just the Public relations side of things, but also state pensions in Kentucky? I was the first attorney general in the nation to say the responsibility of a pension board’s members should be to maximize the return on investment for shareholders, as opposed to prioritizing ESG ideas that, if ultimately fulfilled, would destroy the fossil fuels industry in Kentucky. When you hear BlackRock or Vanguard or State Street say they’re going to preclude investment in the fossil fuels industry, your ears perk up and you say, Wait a minute, that’s not OK. Focus on the shareholders, the pension beneficiaries, which are teachers, firefighters, and police officers.

The 1792 Exchange tracks corporate company policies in regards to issues like ESG. What are the goals of your organization? We’re a nonprofit that exists to ensure corporations steer back to neutrality—basically, sanity—and get away from this far-left ideology that’s infiltrated our corporate community. We want a corporate community that is focused on great customer service and building amazing products that make people want to come back to your business. Over the last few years, as the Business Roundtable moved away from the idea that companies exist to better the shareholders, it’s resulted in millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, Target having “tuck-friendly” bathing suits, Bud Light doing advertisements with Dylan Mulvaney, and all sorts of craziness.

Conservative social media activist Robby Starbuck has cited 1792 Exchange’s research in his videos taking companies like John Deere to task for ESG policies. Is the message about prioritizing customers over political agendas gaining traction? We’ve been excited about what we saw particularly last year. Iconic brands moved away from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and moved away from the Human Rights Campaign. Brands like Walmart, McDonald’s, Ford Motor Co., Tractor Supply, John Deere. Companies like these have stepped up to the plate to say, “Enough is enough. We recognize where our customers are and want to align ourselves with their values as opposed to bending the knee to the far left.”

You support an alternative to the diversity, equity, and inclusion vision. Can you explain your view? I tell people all the time, as a Christian in particular, we want to see a colorblind society, right? In my view, heaven will be full of people who are of different colors and stripes, all proclaiming and worshipping the name of Jesus. And so I think here on earth, it’s important to have that same sort of vision. My wife Makenze and I have two boys. Theodore’s 3 and Bennett is 1. We want them to grow up in a society that’s based on what I refer to as MEI—merit, excellence, and intelligence or integrity. The DEI worldview pits people against each other and distinguishes them based on oppressed versus oppressor.

You were criticized for not pursuing murder charges against the police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor. How do you respond to claims that you failed to perform your duty as attorney general? A group of career prosecutors was in charge of this case, and I was proud of their work in getting to the right decision. It was a really fraught and difficult time, and of course when someone dies, I mean, people’s hearts always break over that. That was certainly true in this case with the loss of Ms. Taylor’s life. But when I was elected, I said I was going to do my job “without fear or favor.” There was the responsibility to do that here and make sure that we were applying the law to the facts as they were and not as how some people in the left-leaning media wanted to portray them. And we did the right thing.

You’re running to replace Mitch McConnell, who’s served as a U.S. senator since 1985. If elected, how would you lead differently or similarly? I think we need new leadership in the Senate from Kentucky and leadership that understands the values of the men, women, and children of our 120 counties, and wants to be an advocate for them. I’ve had great experience doing that, whether it was standing up for constitutional rights as attorney general or helping bring in nearly $900 million to the state to fight the opioid and drug epidemic. At the end of the day, I hope people see that I want to help be the hands and feet of Christ. That’s what I’ll rest on over the course of this campaign, but also in old age—preserving our constitutional rights, fighting for the America First agenda, standing up for our coal and natural gas industry, helping bring dollars into the state to fight the drug epidemic. I’ll rest my hat on those things.