Voters get first look of KY Democrats for House, Senate... and maybe governor
Do Kentucky Democrats want fighters or uniters?
It might depend on what office they’re voting for, if candidate speeches to a packed room in Mount Sterling were any indication.
All three of the declared Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, three candidates for Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District and two top Democrats considering runs for governor in 2027 spoke at the Montgomery County Democratic Party’s Wendell Ford Dinner on Tuesday night.
The candidates for Senate railed hard against Washington Republicans while the prospective gubernatorial candidates focused on staying positive about the state’s trajectory. Those running for the House in Central Kentucky struck a balance between the two approaches.
The speech from Rocky Adkins, the governor’s senior adviser and onetime political opponent, was the longest and best received. He praised Gov. Andy Beshear, emphasized his path from opponent to ally, and sounded consistently like someone thinking about running again for governor.
The theme tying it all together was unity.
“I’m supposed to not like you because you disagree with me on an issue? I’m not supposed to like you because you got a ‘D’ by your name and somebody else may have an ‘R’ by their name or an ‘I?’” Adkins said. “Are you kidding me? We are better than that. Let me tell you my definition of public service: It’s not putting your foot on somebody’s neck and trying to break it.
“Public service is about getting up every day and trying to help somebody’s community be a better place and somebody’s life be a better life.”
It’s not exactly a novel political message. But Adkins’ speech stood in contrast to the national Democratic discourse, where many have said the party needs “fighters” to push back on the GOP trifecta controlling Washington. He used the example of his own 2019 Democratic gubernatorial primary loss to Beshear.
“The governor and I had had not one bad word to say about each other. We didn’t pick at each other, we didn’t spit on each other, we didn’t hate each other, we didn’t say bad things about each other. You know what that campaign was about? That campaign was about our individual vision of how to build a better Kentucky, and I think you deserve that — a campaign that actually talks about what you care about,” Adkins said.
RT Lowry, a teacher in Mount Sterling, said that’s what Kentucky Democrats want.
“In a place like Kentucky, people want to hear about uniting. People want to hear about how folks can come together to get things done, even little things policy-wise, things that affect people day-to-day,” Lowry said.
Adkins stopped short of saying that campaign was coming in 2027, but many Democrats believe he and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman will run. Both are barnstorming the state speaking at events like the one in Montgomery County.
Coleman also spoke at the dinner, like Adkins leaning into her work with Beshear and speaking as if another campaign similar to one she ran with Beshear was yet to come.
“We won our (2019) election by one-and-a-half votes per precinct. If we can do it, we can replicate it again and again and again across Kentucky because of this economy that we’ve built, because of the values that we share, because of the way that we show up for each other,” Coleman said.
Lowry said he, and most of the other Democrats gathered at the event, love Coleman and Adkins. He’d like to see both run for governor in 2027.
“I think I’d like both to run, because I think primaries are healthy. I think it’s especially healthy if you have two strong, well-known candidates, like they are, that can really talk about the issues and channel that Beshear spirit,” Lowry said.
Robert Blanton, the lone Democratic member of the Clark County Fiscal Court, he thinks both will run and would support either.
He also longed for Democratic candidates in the state to moderate.
“The most electable candidate will be, in my opinion, the one who’s a little bit more towards the center. The citizens of Kentucky would benefit so much more from that candidate,” Blanton said.
Democratic Senate candidates
Tuesday offered the first glimpse of all three declared Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate on the same stage in a candidate forum — not a debate where candidates interact with each other, but where they each answer the same question from a moderator.
Pam Stevenson, Logan Forsythe and Joel Willett all teed off on what they see as mismanagement in Washington when it comes to healthcare and gun violence.
All three railed against the GOP-led “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which extended an income tax cut and cut spending on Medicaid, among other things.
“It is wrong that they would take something that is a human right and make money from it, then deny you that right because they want more money,” Stevenson, who leads the House Democrats as minority floor leader, said.
Forsythe, an attorney and former secret service agent from Lexington, and Willett both discussed the harms of Medicaid cuts to hospitals, particularly rural ones that serve as a lifeline for patients in far-flung parts of the state.
“People are going to die. That’s all there is to it. You will not survive if you go into cardiac arrest. You cannot have an episode like that and drive three hours and be okay,” Forsythe said.
Willett, a Louisville native and former CIA officer, when asked about influencing politics in the role of senator, quipped that you needed someone from a humble background like him when dealing with the several ultrawealthy members of the Trump administration.
“They’re not like the average Kentuckian, and I’m convinced they don’t even like the average Kentuckian. You’ve got to send somebody there who knows what the struggles are for families across the state,” Willett said.
When asked about what to do to curb gun violence — a subject top of mind given recent mass shooting incidents and the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk — the candidates all expressed anger.
Willett was mentioned two “uniquely American” ways of dying. The first was via fentanyl overdose, which his father passed away from in 2019.
“The other uniquely American way to die is to get your face blown off at your freaking elementary school, and that should enrage all responsible gun owners. There isn’t mental health care, there aren’t checks – responsible gun owners get lumped into the same groups of people who have no business owning a firearm or carrying a firearm. I also don’t think we need weapons of war in the streets of America,” he said, to applause.
Stevenson also decried shootings and disagreed with conservative’s reading of the Second Amendment, which states “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
“If you think that you’re not stable, you don’t even have a right to gun until you are. The Second Amendment, if you would read it, doesn’t say you can have a gun under all circumstances. It says you can have a gun,” Stevenson said.
6th Congressional Democrats
The three Democratic candidates for Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District at the event — Zach Dembo, Erin Petrey and former state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson — struck a balance between the fight against Republicans and the need to follow Beshear, Adkins and Coleman’s example.
David Kloiber, a former Lexington city councilman also running for the seat, did not appear at the event.
In answering a question on agriculture, the candidates all went hard against tariffs levied by the Trump administration, which have led to drops in demand and prices for Kentucky crops like soybeans.
Dembo spoke of the increased prices of tractors at companies like John Deere, who have had to make up for dropping profits due to the tariffs. That’s a double whammy for soybean farmers in Kentucky, he said.
“What you have now are farmers who aren’t able to sell those soybeans, and in the meantime, if they want to get equipment, because of these aluminum and steel tariffs, they’re getting squeezed and can’t buy equipment. And you know why this is? This is because Congress has laid down and given up their power to an out-of-control White House,” Dembo said.
Stevenson used her answer to hammer home her focus on the economy working for middle-class Kentuckians as opposed to the wealthy, an early hallmark of her campaign.
“We must get back to having working families, farmers and small businesses at the center of our economy. Our economy doesn’t work so rich people can get richer. It needs to work for all of us,” Stevenson said.
Petrey, who has written about the bourbon industry for several years as a blogger and influencer, went straight to the state’s signature product, decrying the effects of the tariffs.
“There is no room in a modern, globalized economy for backwards, protectionist trade policy. So the number one thing I would do is to eliminate these tariffs and move more towards non-tariff trade barriers, things that incentivize other countries to invest in the United States in these industries,” Petrey said.
When asked about disaster relief, Stevenson recalled her own experience checking on her family in Hindman in the wake of devastating 2022 flooding in the region.
“I know people that lost everything — their home, both their cars, everything they own — and FEMA offered $9,000. That’s an insult, but now we’ve got an administration that is talking about getting rid of FEMA altogether,” Stevenson said.
Dembo talked about getting back to New Deal-era Democratic politics when funding relief for disaster-stricken areas like Eastern Kentucky, and Petrey, who has worked in renewable energy, focused on climate change and coal.
She said that climate change, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels lik coal, is “straight up destroying lives.”
“My dad’s family, they’re all from Hazard. I’ve seen the Kudzu monsters on the side of the road. I’ve seen the dead mountain towns that you roll through on the Mountain Parkway because coal used to be profitable. But coal is doing a good job of keeping itself out of business. Coal used to keep the lights on, but a study that came out on Friday showed that Kentucky ranks at the very bottom in regards to health outcomes and energy, mostly because of our reliance on coal,” Petrey said.
