State reps, mayoral fights & a ‘Trump bump?’ 17 races & 5 trends to watch for in Kentucky
On Tuesday night, all eyes will fix on about seven swing states likely to decide the outcome of the electoral college result in this year’s presidential election.
Kentucky isn’t one of them.
But there are still dozens of races in the Commonwealth worth watching. Some could change the flow of legislation, others might reinforce the state’s Republican leanings or put a dent in the GOP’s growth narrative over the last several decades. Some will tell us more about specific regions of the state, and even more could test the strength of politicians with potential statewide ambitions.
Excluding local government elections in Lexington, which are well-covered in the Herald-Leader’s voter guide, here are a handful of the results you should be paying attention to and analyzing as the votes roll in Tuesday night.
Presidential Election
Few people are holding their breath about where Kentucky’s eight electoral college votes are going. Former President Donald Trump has won the state by 30 and 26 percentage points in the past and expects an easy victory once again.
But, given that the top of the ticket affects down-ticket voter behavior, it’s still important for the politics of the state in elections this year and moving forward.
Trump has staked an essentially unprecedented claim on rural communities in the state.
In 2020, Trump won every single Kentucky county except Fayette and Jefferson. He won all but one of those (Franklin) by double digits, and all but 14 (so, 104 counties) by more than 30 percentage points. Not all of those counties are predominantly rural, but most of them are.
The median counties in terms of presidential margin, Carter in the East and Breckenridge in the West, went for Trump by 53 and 52 percentage points.
The vast majority of those 118 counties showed either little change between 2016 and 2020 in their support for Trump or moved slightly towards the Democrats.
But Jefferson and Fayette saw big swings and carried the state’s shift from +30 Trump to +26. Jefferson, home to Louisville, went from backing Hilary Clinton by 13.3 points to Biden by 20. Fayette, which is about two-fifths the size of Jefferson swung from 9.5 to 21 points for the Democratic presidential nominee.
If you’re looking for representative county results early in the night before the statewide totals come in, check out Madison and Boyle counties. Both have registered county-level results within a point or two of the statewide totals for president and governor since 2019.
Eastern Kentucky Democrats: Doom or Daylight?
The gradual – and then, in 2016, all of a sudden – demise of the Eastern Kentucky Democrat has been an ongoing trend for years.
Political observers of this trend will get a read into how it’s going on three different levels come election night.
Rep. Ashley Tackett Laferty, D-Prestonsburg, is the on-paper favorite against Republican Brandon Spencer for House District 95. She’s outspent him, she beat him by nearly 20 points in the 2022 election and she’s proven herself as the most consistent electoral odds-defier in the region; Trump won her home county by about 50 percentage points in 2016 and 2020.
Laferty is the most conservative Democrat in the House, and it isn’t particularly close, though the Republican Party of Kentucky has attempted to link her to Communism. She has weathered a Trump wave before, but Republicans are hopeful that the gravitational pull of Trump will flip one of the last seats left in the region; Sen. Robin Webb, D-Grayson, who ran unopposed in 2022 is the only other Eastern Kentucky Democrat serving in Frankfort. If Laferty loses, it’s a bad sign for Democrats who want to keep a presence in the Appalachian part of the state.
In Senate District 29’s madcap write-in race (more on that later), Democrats have largely coalesced around Justin Noble, a Knott County attorney with a common name in the region, to replace the late senator Johnnie L. Turner. Scott Madon, who has the backing of the Senate Republican caucus as well as the Turner’s surviving family, appears to be the favorite, however.
This is, to put it straightforwardly, a weird election. Straight ticket voting won’t count. Voters have to remember the name of the candidate well enough to write it out. Campaign timelines have been crunched. Whatever the result, it’s hard to attribute to any overarching trend. Still, it’s a place where Democrats could get four years of representation in a region that’s been icy to them since Turner beat the similarly-named Johnny Ray Turner in 2020.
Another race of interest in the region is Rep. Chris Fugate, R-Chavies, defending his House District 84 seat against Democratic challenger Zack Hall. Fugate, a popular local pastor who previously served as a state trooper, is a heavy favorite and there’s little reason to believe that he won’t win again. He took office in 2016 when several other Eastern Kentucky Republicans helped flip the House with an audacious 26-point win over the Democratic incumbent.
But Hall is the first Democratic challenger running a professional campaign in six years. If he gets within single digits of Fugate for House District 84 — including the conservative ancestral Democratic counties of Breathitt, Perry and Owsley — while Trump’s on the ballot, there’s reason for Democrats to believe they’ve essentially hit rock bottom in the region and can move on up from there. If Fugate wins by as much or more than he has in previous years (48 points in 2020 and 38 in 2022), then it’s back to the drawing board for Democrats in the region, even in districts like the 84th, which Gov. Andy Beshear won by 12 percentage points last year.
Local Interest
It’s not the primary cycle for local county elections in Kentucky. Most county judge/executives, the all-important county equivalent to a strong mayor format, get elected during midterms.
But still, there are lots of interesting under-the-radar local fights across the state.
High on that list is the local ballot initiatives related to medical marijuana. Read more about those in our coverage from reporter Aaron Mudd. There are lots of measures on the ballot and lots of places that have already opted in or out; know where your county stands.
A couple mayoral elections loom large.
Bowling Green’s race for mayor features an incumbent in Todd Alcott versus a former Democratic state representative in Patti Minter, a professor at Western Kentucky University. In a recent debate, Minter hit Alcott on response to the historic 2021 tornado and the city’s lack of a Fairness Ordinance, protecting LGBTQ citizens from discrimination; Alcott, in turn, flexed recent developments in the city, including downtown revitalization and a riverfront project.
Whoever wins will have significant sway over one of the fastest-growing communities in the commonwealth.
Another mid-size Kentucky city is electing a mayor in a race that could prove close is Owensboro’s mayoral race. Mayor Tom Watson advanced with the most votes from the primary, with around 35 percent, but Pam Smith-Wright garnered 32 percent. The general election pits them head-to-head.
Also, in Shelby County, voters are being asked if they want to cede more than 900 acres of land to neighboring Spencer County. According to a story from WDRB, GIS mapping tools recently discovered that more than 200 voters were registered in Spencer County, paying Spencer County taxes and sending their kids to Spencer County schools who were actually Shelby County residents. The measure would officially put those residents back in the county they thought they were in for years.
A Senate Scramble - the race for the 29th
It’s history. It’s also a heck of an interesting race.
Madon is the nominal favorite and Noble is the one getting the most Democratic support. But that doesn’t make either of them a shoo-in.
Things could easily get weird. In fact, they already have.
Willie Crase, a former candidate for judge executive in Floyd County who is now running as a Republican, has been running a vigorous campaign. That includes one supporter who waved a sign at a busy intersection in a full-body gorilla suit.
The four candidates who have aired television ads on WYMT, the region’s primary broadcast news source, are Crase, Madon, Noble, and Leonard Hendrickson.
Crase, who is one of several Floyd County candidates, emphasizes first and foremost in his ad that he’s a pastor.
Hendrickson, a retired coal operator, is running out of the Knott County community of Pine Top. His ad asks voters if they see prosperity around them and implores them to vote against “the political machine” represented, he argues, by Madon.
His pitch is simple.
“I love God, coal and Donald Trump, and I believe in telling it like it is,” Hendrickson said.
Hendrickson was dinged by the Mine Safety and Health Administration in 2006 when a worker at one of his sites was killed in an accident “because management failed to ensure the ground control plan was being followed and that adequate examinations were being conducted to identify and correct hazardous conditions.”
An ad for Noble makes an interesting political argument, promising to viewers that they have the power to elect a “pro-public education, pro-labor” candidate if they “stick together.” Significantly more candidates are self-identifying as Republicans in the race.
Other ones to watch out for include former WYMT anchor and attorney Tanner Hesterberg, who is tying himself to a law proposed in the wake of the highly publicized murder of Amber Spradlin in Floyd County; Tyler Ward, a Letcher Countian who is running digital ads comparing himself to Trump; and Valerie Horn, a highly decorated community activist in Whitesburg.
Sixth Congressional District
Longtime U.S. Rep. Andy Barr doesn’t have much left to prove, politically speaking.
He’s won the Central Kentucky-centric Sixth Congressional district by wide margins in 2020 and 2022. He beat a massive influx of money and a strong Democratic candidate in Amy McGrath in 2018. The seat has been in Republican hands since Barr knocked off former congressman Ben Chandler in 2012.
In 2022, the first cycle under the newly-configured district — which shed Franklin County and added parts of Central Kentucky more loyal to Republicans — Barr beat Democratic challenger Geoff Young by 29 percentage points. But that result may have been an outlier. Young did not get the support of Beshear or the Kentucky Democratic Party, both of whom he has sued several times. In 2020, with the slightly more Democrat-friendly district, Barr still beat injury attorney Josh Hicks by 17 percentage.
Against Democrat Randy Cravens, who hasn’t raised a significant amount of money but has the support of state Democrats, Barr has the opportunity to flex his muscle again.
Alternatively, the district has the opportunity to say it’s either trending bluer, or at least less committedly red, than the story of the last two elections would tell us.
So, two factors are worth testing in this race: Barr’s popularity and the district’s shade of red.
Fayette County, the district’s anchor, has grown to become just as Democratic-leaning as the state’s bluest bastion in recent history, Jefferson County. In the district’s old configuration, Democrats once saw it as only a matter of time before they could regain control and claim a second of Kentucky’s six congressional districts.
If Cravens does relatively poorly — say, loses by a margin not much better than Young — then Republicans will sleep well for a while. If not, Democrats could hatch a plan to run a higher-name ID, better-funded candidate in 2026.
Why 2026?
Barr has given no public indication of wanting to pursue this path, but he’d immediately be on the shortlist of Kentucky Republicans who could replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, who is 82. Barr’s congressional campaign had about $3.8 million on hand as of last month — all of which can be redirected to a hypothetical Senate bid — not to mention hundreds of thousands parked in other affiliated groups and his extensive fundraising history.
Barr seems committed to serving on the House Financial Services Committee, and has committed to gunning for chairman, but with Democrats slightly favored to retake the House and GOP competitor Rep. French Hill, R-AR, raising gobs of money, the chairmanship may not materialize.
If he went for it, that would leave the Sixth Congressional District open and in for its first big race since 2018. The Barr-Cravens result would provide a benchmark for that (still hypothetical) scenario.
Louisville suburbs
If there’s one battleground area in the state, it’s the band of suburban Louisville nestled between the Watterson Expressway and Gene Snyder Freeway.
Republican Reps. Emily Callaway, Susan Witten, Ken Fleming, Jared Bauman, Jason Nemes and Democrat Rachel Roarx are all playing defense — that’s House Districts 37, 31, 48, 28, 33 and 38. Each is a Beshear double-digit district that didn’t skew too hard for either Biden or Trump in 2020; all 12 candidates across those districts have raised a significant amount of money, too.
According to elections analysis website Dave’s Redistricting, Witten is the Republican holding the most Democratic-leaning district in the state — and that calculation doesn’t even factor in Beshear’s 25-point win there. She and Fleming are the only Republicans currently holding districts won by Biden in the 2020 election.
If Witten and Fleming both win, it is almost assuredly a good night for Kentucky Republicans in Frankfort, particularly those who want to remain strong in the state’s suburban areas.
On the flip side, both losing their seats would give a spark to Democrats anxious for a big gain in the statehouse.
If candidates like House GOP Whip Jason Nemes or representatives Callaway and Bauman lose or even get very close to losing — whose districts straddle the southern and Eastern edges of the county — it could be a sign of a major shift in the state.
What could be the deciding factor if it is such a good night for Democrats? Jared Smith, Democratic political operative and cohost of the Kentucky Politics Weekly podcast, has an idea.
“I will say this to the Louisville suburban Republicans: if they lose, I firmly believe abortion will be the reason they lost,” Smith said.
The Supreme Court of the United States decision in mid-2022 striking down the abortion rights protections established in Roe v. Wade triggered Kentucky’s near-total ban on abortion. Though the nation writ large saw a backlash to this decision in favor of the Democrats — a majority of the high court was appointed by Republican presidents — the effect wasn’t really felt in the House, where Republicans trimmed the Democratic minority from 25 to 20.
However, Beshear ran against the state’s ban in his five point win last year and Harris’ campaign has fixated on the issue. It could loom larger in the minds of suburban voters, particularly moderate Republican women, than in previous years — at least that’s what Democrats are hoping.
If Roarx loses and the others hold, it’s an undoubtedly bad night for Democrats in Louisville, and potentially Kentucky. It would show that Kentucky’s suburbs are still, by and large, red.
The geography of Amendment 2
There’s a reason one of Protect Our Schools KY’s first commercials featured an Eastern Kentuckian.
The group leading the charge against Amendment 2 is hoping that rural communities, particularly in the state’s East and West, will vote against the amendment. Local school districts anchor these communities — both from an economic and identitarian standpoint — in a way that isn’t the case for many suburban and urban places.
A strong result for the campaign in those areas would go against what the amendment’s biggest detractors, elected Democrats, have faced for several years.
While Democrats are, generally speaking, at the levers of the “no” side and Republicans steering the ship on “yes,” the amendment has no “D” or “R” by its name. It’s got the full opposition of perhaps the only widely popular “D” politician in the state in Beshear.
On the other hand, the “yes on 2” movement is hoping that it fares well in cities for a Republican-backed initiative. Public school struggles in Louisville, in particular, are well-documented.
Either way, the results on the map Tuesday night may challenge your priors on what communities are willing to support Democrat-backed and Republican-backed campaigns.
If positive for the “no” side, the results could provide a roadmap for Democrats hoping to gain an edge. The last big “no” effort, on 2022’s anti-abortion rights Amendment 2, did so for Beshear. Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman has, more than once, hinted at a similar takeaway from a positive result against this amendment for Democrats moving forward.
Trading jabs in suburban Lexington
Similarly to Louisville, the interesting races for the statehouse in Lexington are on the margins of the urban center. House District 45, the race between Thomas Jefferson and Adam Moore, and House District 88, Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson’s race against Vanessa Grossl, both straddle neighborhoods along Man O’ War Boulevard.
They also include more red sections of surrounding counties: Jessamine in the 45th’s case and Scott in the 88th.
The result in these precincts will show whether or not Fayette County’s suburban voters are in sync with those living within the bounds of New Circle Road or if they’re different kinds of voters altogether, more tepid to the Democratic brand.
They would also be career-defining for any of the candidates. A win would launch Jefferson, Moore and Grossl’s political tenures and could catapult Stevenson into the role of House Democratic leader.
This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
