Construction worker. Marine. Cop. Lawyer. Now this man wants to oust Andy Barr.
Josh Hicks has been a construction worker, Marine, police officer and lawyer. Now he wants a new job — congressman.
Hicks announced Thursday he plans to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, in November 2020. Barr, who was first elected in 2012, is seeking his fifth term.
“I want to run this race because I feel like I’m the right kind of candidate that should run in this district,” Hicks told the Herald-Leader in a June interview. “I feel like I have the rural roots to go and talk to folks about this. I have the background and life experience that allow me to talk about this in a serious and real manner and understand their concerns and discuss with them why I believe what I believe.”
Hicks, a Lexington lawyer, has never held elected office. He lost a 2018 bid for the Kentucky House of Representatives against incumbent state Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington. Barr has been targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after he defeated former fighter pilot Amy McGrath by three points in his 2018 reelection bid.
Barr said Hicks “might not be the last opponent” who gets in the race and that he welcomes competition.
“I don’t know much about him,” Barr said of Hicks. “I know he’s a liberal trial lawyer who wants to raise taxes, that’s basically all I know, and that he was recruited by the national Democratic Party.”
Like McGrath, Hicks, 40, is a former Marine who is planning to convince the rural voters in the 19-county 6th Congressional District that they can vote for a Democrat, even if they don’t like the direction the national Democratic Party is headed. But Democrats have struggled in rural counties recently. McGrath, who had a similar goal, won a higher percentage of votes in Fayette County than previous Democrats, but lost almost every other county in the district by double-digit margins.
Hicks says his appeal is different than McGrath’s.
For one, his background is different. A graduate of Fleming County High School, Hicks played football at Georgetown College for two years before dropping out. From there, he worked construction before deciding to join the Marine Corps after a recruiter told him the physical fitness requirements were “the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life.” He left the military in 2003, after serving four years and becoming a sergeant. He soon became a police officer for the Maysville Police Department and finished his degree in government at Morehead State University. Then it was on to law school at the University of Kentucky.
Hicks says the various professional experiences he’s held appeal to a variety of voters.
“I think the only way you penetrate the ideological divide is to sort of show them that the Fox News depiction of Democrats is not true,” Hicks said. “And when you don’t, when you just allow the sort of political donor class to choose a candidate or whoever is rich enough to write themselves a check to become a candidate, then you’re never going to be able to overcome that divide.”
Hicks was a registered Republican until 2016, when he went against the trend in Kentucky and registered as a Democrat. Hicks said he voted for former U.S. Sen. John McCain in the presidential race in 2008, President Barack Obama in 2012 and former U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“In 2016, it became apparent that the Republican Party wasn’t for me,” Hicks said. “It wasn’t going in a direction I approved of, it wasn’t representing interests that I thought were important for the government to represent. Once somebody becomes the party exclusively of corporate special interests, that’s not what I believe government is intended to do.”
Hicks was also critical of Barr’s support for the 2017 Republican tax bill, saying it didn’t benefit anyone “other than the ultra-wealthy.” He criticized Barr for his votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his campaign contributions from payday lenders.
But before Hicks gets a chance to go after Barr, he’ll have to go through a primary. Perennial candidate Geoff Young has filed his candidacy in the Sixth Congressional District and Colmon Elridge, a former staffer for Gov. Steve Beshear, has been rumored to be considering the race. Elridge did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2018, Barr was able to paint McGrath as too liberal for the district on controversial issues like immigration and abortion, while being bolstered by support from President Donald Trump. Those issues are expected to be prevalent again in 2020, when Trump’s name is expected to be at the top of the ballot.
Hicks — who supports abortion rights, is against the Trump administration’s policies at the border and thinks “obstruction of justice appears to have happened” in the Mueller investigation — dismissed the notion that he’d be a “sacrificial lamb” should he face Barr in November 2020.
“I refuse to believe that this would be a waste or a sacrifice,” Hicks said. “This is not a one race turnaround for the political problems in this country. This is not a two race or a two cycle or a three cycle turnaround. This is about enacting sort of massive change in our political system, not just here but everywhere.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
