25 people to watch in 2025: Republican AG Coleman brings unique background, ideas as KY’s top cop
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25 to watch in 2025
The Lexington Herald-Leader is tracking 25 individuals we expect will be making news in 2025.
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Editor’s note: The Herald-Leader is profiling 25 individuals that we predict will be making news in 2025.
Who: Russell Coleman, a Republican in his first term as Kentucky’s attorney general.
Background: After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Coleman worked briefly as a prosecutor in Jessamine and Garrard counties and then as an FBI agent. After a spinal injury left him temporarily paralyzed, Coleman worked as a private attorney before, during President Donald Trump’s first administration, he was named the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky. He held that role until 2021. In May 2022, he announced his candidacy to be Kentucky’s top law enforcement officer.
Why is Coleman someone to watch in 2025? In his first year as AG, Coleman made a name for himself pushing back against, as he described it, the Biden Administration’s “dangerous overreach,” by filing — and joining — dozens of lawsuits challenging federal regulations. With President Donald Trump in the White House, Coleman will have an ally in rolling back, for example, environmental protection regulations, cracking down on securing the southern border with Mexico and “attempts to undermine Title IX.”
More locally, he worked to combat Kentucky’s ongoing drug crisis by suing pharmaceutical companies for exploitative practices. He also initiated the first statewide drug addiction prevention initiative — a social media and college campus marketing campaign to be unveiled in 2025 and geared toward younger Kentuckians promoting a “positive message that they are better without drugs.”
Why others say about Russell Coleman: “He’s very good at finding and getting involved with issues that support and enhance his conservative credentials but that don’t necessarily put him in a box on the far right. He still has appeal to the center left and the center right,” said Tres Watson, political consultant and former Republican Party of Kentucky spokesperson.
“He’s got the skills necessary to really make an impact on the state, not just politically, but actually making in impact on the daily lives of Kentuckians,” Watson said. “There’s a lot of opportunity in front of Russell; he’s going to be someone in Kentucky politics and one the scene for quite a while.”
What will Coleman’s focus be in 2025?
“We’ll begin to see the results of our groundwork take effect in 2025. We’re establishing the first-ever statewide drug addiction prevention initiative,” Coleman told the Herald-Leader. “This program will meet Kentucky’s young people where they are – on social media, with influencers and on college campuses – with a positive message that they are better without drugs. Parents like me may never see the educational advertisements, and that’s the point. In the three-legged stool of our response to the drug crisis, Kentucky is leading the nation at treatment and enforcement. We owe it to our kids to build a gold-standard prevention effort, and that’s exactly what I hope to achieve in 2025.”
Coleman also said he will partner with Trump to “focus more energy to address the serious problems facing our country. Together, we can secure the southern border and stop the flow of deadly drugs into our communities. We can crack down on violent crime that threatens families from Lexington and Louisville to our most rural counties..”
He sees “two urgent priorities” in the next year: “First, we’re working with lawmakers on proposals to strengthen Kentucky’s domestic violence laws that will better protect victims and crack down on repeat offenders. The murders of Erica Riley and her mother outside the Hardin County courthouse last year were a horrific call to action.
The General Assembly has also entrusted our office – and me personally – with $15 million to purchase body armor for Kentucky law enforcement. Right now, about one in five officers either has expired body armor or none at all. Through the Body Armor Grant Program, we can help protect officers without straining department budgets. Since we launched the program, more than 900 officers have been approved for new equipment.”
