Douglas-Cooperrider race, big haul for Aull headline Central Ky’s legislative primary finances
Relatively few 2022 Central Kentucky state house primaries are contested, but some of those that are have attracted a hefty sum of campaign finance dollars.
The race between Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville, and coffee shop owner turned political figure Andrew Cooperrider has begun in earnest with the incumbent senator finishing up the legislative session earlier this month.
Cooperrider has netted more than $113,000 in campaign contributions according to his latest Kentucky Registry for Election (KREF) report. Douglas has almost $31,000 in reported campaign funds, the vast majority of it coming from the Senate Republican Caucus Campaign Committee. Douglas told the Herald-Leader that Senators are asked not to focus on fundraising during the legislative session, but that his campaign is “doing well” since he left session.
The challenger’s lead is large, but if you separate Cooperrider’s funds raised after the latest round of legislative redistricting in January – he was drawn out of the district where retiring Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, R-Lexington, served – from the funds raised after the fact, his numbers are much closer to Douglas. Cooperrider had amassed an $80,000 war chest before redistricting, and said that as of now he hasn’t spent money raised running for the 12th Senate District on his current race for the 22nd.
The distinction has mattered before, but it may not this cycle according to KREF Executive Director John Steffen. Steffen confirmed that his office, in communications with Cooperrider’s campaign, has allowed the candidate and others redrawn into new districts to spend money raised in their old districts. A bill that would have explicitly allowed them to do so failed to receive a vote in the House after being posted on the Orders of the Day for several weeks.
“We wanted the bill so it was clear in black and white that he and others like him could keep the money they raised,” Steffen said. “The law is gray. We’ve looked back and KREF has gone both ways. We have landed on letting them keep it this time.”
With Douglas’ campaign being several days late to file its finance report, critics created a website bashing the incumbent called hasdouglasfiledhiskref.com. The page featured a running clock that logged how long overdue Douglas was to file his report. Late reports, Steffen said, have not been uncommon in recent election cycles as KREF continues to work out kinks on its newer online platform.
After winning a special election last November, Douglas sponsored a couple priority pieces of legislation during this year’s session. One ended Kentucky’s state of emergency weeks earlier than planned, at the cost of $50 million in food stamps for Kentuckians, and another on vehicle property taxes, pieces of which were incorporated into an executive order from Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Lexington.
Cooperrider’s campaign has continued to beat the drum that launched him into prominence: conservative critiques of COVID-19 mitigation efforts.
Chad Aull’s haul
Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, called it quits in Frankfort after 23 years of service to the 79th House District earlier this year, leaving a wide open Lexington seat.
So far, Chad Aull has received an endorsement from not just Westrom but also the area’s lawmaker in the other legislative chamber, Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, as well as current Lexington Democratic representatives Ruth Ann Palumbo and Kelly Flood.
Aull has also raised $146,000, the most of any candidate for state representative this cycle.
No stranger to Democratic politics in Kentucky – he’s worked for former governor Steve Beshear, former auditor Johnathan Miller as well as former lieutenant governor, Louisville mayor and Obama White House official Jerry Abramson.
Justin Bramhall, Aull’s challenger, has the advantage of running for the seat before, though he withdrew from a brief primary race in 2020 out of deference to Westrom.
Though his report has yet to surface on KREF, Bramhall said that his campaign has $2,648 on hand.
The seat has no Republican candidates running.
Contenders for Flood’s seat
Two people are in contention for retiring Democratic Rep. Kelly Flood’s central Lexington seat: Lindsey Burke and Chris Couch.
Burke has raised over $11,000 and gained the endorsement of Flood. Couch has raised $12,780.
Couch’s campaign has ostensibly been postponed since he was arrested for allegedly assaulting his partner, the Herald-Leader reported, but he did file a finance report to KREF.
Couch is a 25-year-old who has worked for several Democratic and non-partisan campaigns, as well as the Kentucky Democratic Party.
Burke is a social worker-turned-attorney who, unlike Couch, has been actively campaigning through the Spring.
Four-way GOP race in Frankfort
Kentucky’s new 20th Senate District features a four-person seesaw race, balanced between the Northern and Southern poles of a district that snakes down from suburban Northern Kentucky to Franklin County.
Northern Kentuckians and Frankfort natives with some regional name recognition have filed for the office made vacant by retiring Republican Senator Paul Hornback. Redistricting shifted Hornback’s Shelby County out of the district, and replaced it with much of Sen. Adrienne Southworth’s, R-Anderson, previous district.
It left a vacuum with Republicans Gex Williams, Phyllis Sparks, Calen Studler and Mike Templeman hoping to fill the void.
Northern Kentuckians Williams and Sparks lead the pack in reported funds raised.
Williams served in the Senate in the 1990s, but hasn’t held public office since a failed run as the Republican nominee for Kentucky’s 4th District U.S. Congressional District. He posted $53,701 in donations, the lion’s share coming from individual contributions.
Sparks, who has been at the helm of Republican campaigns and county party organizations in her native Boone County, has more than $65,000 reported; $50,000 of that is comprised of loans from her own pocketbook, though.
Studler, a Frankfort native former candidate for Senate, has posted more than $17,000 in receipts. His 2020 bid for office was cut short in a crowded Republican primary that saw Southworth victorious.
Templeman is a former coal executive based in Frankfort now who has posted more than $18,000 in receipts, almost all of it from himself.
This story was originally published April 25, 2022 at 1:44 PM.
