He’s running in KY’s 6th Congressional District, but you won’t see his name on the ballot
Voters in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District will have at least one other option for the U.S. Representative seat currently held by GOP Rep. Andy Barr, but the candidate won’t be on the ballot.
Randy Cravens, a 42 year-old airline information technology worker from Richmond, initially intended to make the ballot as an Independent candidate, but failed to do so because he had been registered as a Democrat after the Jan. 1 deadline.
Now he’s launching a write-in campaign against both Barr and Geoff Young, the Democratic nominee for the district. Young has ruffled feathers among state Democrats, including Gov. Andy Beshear, due to his contentious past with the party and unorthodox foreign policy stance.
Though Cravens says he’ll weigh in on more issues soon, his materials so far portray a single-issue campaign. He’s focused on gun control, a topic that has captured the nation’s attention following the recent massacre in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman shot and killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers.
And he’s aware that his write-in campaign is a long shot.
“The odds are so long that it would boggle the mind to imagine a win if it were to happen. But if there’s a nonzero possibility that I were to win, I think it would be worth it to myself and my family to say that ‘when this issue arose, we took the steps to at least try,’” Cravens said.
“There’s nothing gained by doing nothing.”
Candidates’ views on gun control
Cravens has said that he’d fight hard for what he calls necessary “first steps” on gun control like increasing the minimum age to buy an assault rifle from 18 to 21, cracking down on bump stocks that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire more than one round with a single pull of the trigger and closing various loopholes in gun sales law.
The write-in candidate said he likely wouldn’t be putting his name out there had runner up Chris Preece, who Young beat in every county except Fayette in the district Democratic primary, won. But Young’s win, he said, induced a “break the glass and pull the fire alarm” moment for him.
Young, a Lexington resident who has run for office eight times in the past 10 years, has called himself a “2nd Amendment Democrat,” though he shares the same views as progressive Democrats on several other issues.
“When I take the NRA candidate surveys every one or two years or so, I usually come up agreeing with the NRA on 19 out of 20 questions,” he said. “The one I disagree with is usually the last one where they ask ‘should we make it easier to export guns to other countries.’”
Young said he disagrees with more restrictions on gun sales, and blames America’s “culture of vigilante violence” abroad for its domestic gun violence problem.
In a statement released Wednesday, Barr said he opposes the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” a package of bills being advanced by the House Democratic majority that would bar sales of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21; ban large-capacity magazines; and establish new federal offenses for gun trafficking, among other measures.
Barr called the Democratic legislation “a sad attempt to politicize tragedy and do absolutely nothing to address our nation’s mental health crisis.”
Barr’s House Republican minority is pushing its own legislation in response to the Uvalde shooting, to provide more money for school resources officers, guidance counselors and school safety-related grants.
“Imposing more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners simply will not reduce deaths from mass violence,” Barr said.
Cravens said his policy priorities align generally with national Democrats. Quoting former president Bill Clinton, he said abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” he supports Medicare for All, increased legal immigration and is strongly pro-union.
Notable in this race: He supports sending aid to Ukraine.
Young’s platform is centered around foreign policy, and he’s caught flack from fellow Democrats about his views on Ukraine. He’s claimed that mainstream media reports from the Eastern European country’s ongoing struggle against Russian invasion are mostly false and Ukraine and the United States are “the bad guys.” He’s also said that the Ukrainian government — whose president is Jewish — is “controlled by Washington and Nazi Ukrainians.”
Some academics who have followed the region’s history and current political landscape have called Young’s views “absurd” and “misguided.”
‘Offer voters more choices’
Cravens made clear that he acknowledges and respects Young’s status as the duly elected Democratic nominee, despite his strategy of running as a Democratic write-in candidate.
Young said he doesn’t have a problem with Cravens’ positioning.
“I think he’ll add another voice. I think 3-way or 4-way races are better than 2-way races because they offer voters more choices,” Young said.
Originally from Paducah, Cravens said that he moved to Central Kentucky during childhood and attended Tates Creek High School in Lexington. His family has lived in Richmond for roughly one year.
“I’m very much your average Joe citizen. I work, I hang out with my family, and we just try to make a good life with it,” he said.
Fayette County Democratic Party Chair Josh Mers, when contacted about both Young and Cravens, said that the local party would not be endorsing in the race.
“Our focus is on our state legislative races. We are going to work overtime to make sure that despite the Ky GOP’s desire to pick their voters and dilute the representation of Lexington, we are able to elect and re-elect representatives and senators that are committed to fighting for the everyday Kentuckian,” Mers wrote.
When asked about the race, the Kentucky Democratic Party referred the Herald-Leader back to its original statement on Young, where KDP Executive Director Sebastian Kitchen said the party could not support him due to his history of lawsuits against the party.
This story was originally published June 9, 2022 at 10:36 AM.
