Louisville lawmaker, aiming for McConnell’s seat, makes his case in Eastern Kentucky

It’s been about four months since Charles Booker, the Democratic state representative from Louisville who has formed an exploratory committee for a U.S. Senate run, drove to Harlan County to throw his support behind protesting coal miners camped out along a set of railroad tracks.

The experience, he said, was transformative.

At the time, a group of out-of-work miners had occupied a railroad line used to haul coal from a Harlan County mine. They were protesting their former employer, Blackjewel LLC., for issuing bad checks to hundreds of Kentucky miners and laying them off with virtually no notice.

Booker was one of many Kentucky politicians to visit the protest. Others included Democrats Amy McGrath and Mike Broihier, Booker’s would-be primary opponents.

“I think what that inspired in me is that Kentuckians are ready to work for the change that we need to see, even if that means to be uncomfortable and to stand up and speak out,” Booker said.

“It changed my life, for sure,” he said.

On Wednesday, Booker was back in Eastern Kentucky, taking questions from a small crowd of voters at a restaurant in Whitesburg with the hope of gaining some notoriety in a region where few people know his name.

Booker’s potential campaign for U.S. Senate would not be easy. Before getting a chance at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he’d need to defeat McGrath, who has already raised $10.7 million for her Senate campaign and built up her name identification during an unsuccessful 2018 bid against U.S. Rep. Andy Barr.

About 20 people showed up to Booker’s event in Whitesburg, the home city of the liberal-leaning media organization Appalshop and one of the first stops on a listening tour that Booker will take across the state in coming weeks.

“For me, it’s a matter of showing up early and often, and just letting folks know that you’re gonna be accountable to them,” Booker said. “What we’ve already seen is proof that not only are folks ready, but this is something that can really happen, because the word is spreading.”

The Louisville native is a relative newcomer in Kentucky politics. In 2014, Gov. Steve Beshear appointed him as Director of Personnel and Administrative Services for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, where he worked for about four years.

Last year, Booker won his first term as a state representative in Louisville, becoming the youngest black state legislator in 90 years, according to his campaign website.

Outside of Louisville, Booker has yet to gain name recognition among many voters.

Even Brad Shepherd, the owner of Heritage Kitchen, the Whitesburg restaurant where Booker hosted his event, said he had not heard of Booker prior to the event being scheduled.

Still, Shepherd said he was impressed by Booker. He liked that the potential candidate drove all the way to Whitesburg to listen to voters, rather than push policy points in a traditional stump speech.

“He is actually wanting to meet with people, he wants to hear from people,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd said he’ll vote for whoever wins the Democratic primary, but “I don’t think they stand a chance in hell (against McConnell).”

Winning over voters in this corner of the state could be especially difficult.

Eastern Kentucky typically favors Republican candidates in national elections. McConnell won most Eastern Kentucky counties by a landslide in his 2014 race against Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.

McConnell won Harlan County by more than 4,000 votes that year, and won Letcher County by more than 2,000. President Donald Trump also swept the region.

Booker’s campaign website highlights some of his liberal-leaning policy platforms that will likely turn voters away in the mountains, including support for the Green New Deal and Medicare For All.

Asked how he could sway voters in Eastern Kentucky, Booker said his listening tour is a first step in that direction.

“I respect Kentuckians enough to come earn it, and to show up and say, ‘I’m here to hear your voice,’ and mean it,” Booker said. “I think that’s how you will get folks that may have even taken a chance on Trump because, in honesty, Trump spoke to that. He was calling out the fact that the system is broken, that people have been left behind.”

During his event in Whitesburg, Booker asked members of the audience what concerns they had about the future of Kentucky, and possible ways to fix them.

Among the responses was concern over the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, a program that pays for the health care costs of some former coal miners afflicted by black lung disease. The fund was thrown into financial uncertainty at the beginning of 2019 when the tax used to pay for the benefits was cut by more than half.

McConnell has not yet led an effort to re-institute the tax to its previous level, sparking criticism among some organizations that advocate for miners afflicted by the deadly and debilitating disease.

Booker echoed those criticisms, saying that many Kentuckians, including coal miners and black lung victims, do not feel like their voices have been heard by McConnell or other powerful political leaders.

That’s one way he plans to win the favor of Eastern Kentuckians: using the stories and concerns of people he speaks to during the listening tour to develop his platform. The tour, he hopes, will allow him to gain the trust of voters who may not agree with him on every policy point.

In the more conservative parts of the state, it will be that personal relationship that could carry him to a difficult victory, he said.

“What I’m hoping out of this process is that Kentuckians know that they matter no matter where they’re from, no matter how much money they have in their pocket, no matter what they look like, no matter their party, no matter what they believe,” he said. “That they matter and they deserve a government that is accountable to them.”