Few shakeups, Dem recruitment & more. 4 takeaways from the KY election slate
The dust has finally settled on the filing period to run for office in Kentucky this year.
Though there were no major candidates to file in the final hours — and certainly no soliloquy from a former governor like Matt Bevin’s 2023 spectacle — the final day still offered some intrigue.
For one, a Republican with serious political experience filed to run against U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers.
Then, a handful of state-level candidates — a GOP judge-executive, a Democratic teacher and coach, the father of a Louisville Democratic representative and more — entered the fray.
A couple hopefuls drove long distances to Frankfort only to find that there was a paperwork issue with their filings — and not enough time to fix it before the hard deadline at 4 p.m.
Overall, most of the state’s biggest races were spared the fireworks that sometimes come on the day of the filing deadline. No additional candidates with significant name ID or professional campaigns jumped in the U.S. Senate races on the Republicans’ or Democrats’ side.
As for the U.S. House, the only late entrant of note was Jimmy Ausbrooks, a Democrat who ran and lost to Rep. James Comer in the 1st Congressional District in 2022, but is now running in the Lexington area 6th Congressional District.
Here are four key takeaways from the action Friday.
Former state legislators eye a comeback
Some districts will see familiar names on their ballot.
Former state House Reps. Richard Heath and Killian Timoney filed to run in their district that they previously served in, which are House District 2 and House District 45, respectively.
Both ran in the 2024 election cycle but lost their GOP primaries.
While Thomas Jefferson defeated Timoney with winning over 70% of Republican voters, Jefferson lost to then-Democratic candidate Adam Moore, who won 50.3% of the vote in the general election.
Then-Republican candidate Kim Holloway defeated Heath, didn’t face a Democratic opponent in the general election, and now represents the district.
Timoney previously told the Herald-Leader he has taken the time to listen to his district’s constituents that will help shape his campaign. His district is also one of Kentucky’s politically purple districts, meaning he would have a fair shot to flip the seat from blue to red should he win the primary.
Timoney will face Jeffrey Thompson, who also filed to run in the race, on the May primary ballot. Thompson is looking to make a political comeback, too. He served for 10 years in the Idaho state legislature before losing a race for mayor of Idaho Falls in 2018.
Meanwhile, Heath will have to face Holloway, who filed for reelection, on his district’s ballot. He had previously served more than a decade in the House and was chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
Clark County Judge-Executive Les Yates is looking to get back to Frankfort. Yates was defeated in a 2020 primary by Rep. Ryan Dotson, R-Winchester, but later claimed his current local role in 2022. Yates is running against a GOP opponent in Daniel Konstantopoulos and Democrats Chelsea Kirk and Rory Houlihan.
Frankfort politics: a family business?
A state House Democratic lawmaker’s father is making a last-minute bid to run for a Republican-held seat in Louisville.
Suhas Kulkarni, father of state Louisville Democratic Rep. Nima Kulkarni, filed to run in the state House District 48 race, where Republican Rep. Ken Fleming is running for reelection.
Kulkarni said he launched a campaign because of bills filed in the House that would ban immigrant citizens from holding state and local offices in Kentucky.
The legislation, House Bill 186, adds requirements that Kentuckians eligible for the aforementioned local offices are “natural-born citizens” and are “national(s) of only the United States and no other county.”
Another bill, House Bill 259, is a proposed constitutional amendment inserting the same prohibition into offices included in the state constitution and covers every other elected office in the state.
Suhas Kulkarni and Nima Kulkarini are both naturalized citizens and would be disqualified from running under this bill. She moved to the U.S. from India when she was six years old.
“Our family has had the actual experience of the American dream,” Suhas Kulkarni said to Louisville Public Media. “At the end of the day, if somebody says to me that after all of this, you’re not eligible to have some of the rights that citizens have, I don’t agree with it. So I said, this is not the time for me to sit on the sidelines.”
Nathan Bellows is the other Democrat who filed to run in the district’s primary.
Meanwhile, Nima Kulkarni is running for reelection in state House District 40 and will face Patrick Bryant Dunegan in the primary election.
Democrats perform similarly at filing deadline
In Kentucky House elections, Democrats made a show in most districts that could be considered competitive.
The total number of seats they let go uncontested in general elections only went down slightly — from 43 to 42 — but the majority of those were in solidly red areas.
The only major miss for Democratic recruitment efforts was GOP Rep. Kevin Jackson’s downtown Bowling Green seat, which flipped Republican in 2022 and was uncontested in 2024, too.
Aside from that one, Democrats pretty much covered their bases this year.
A couple came hours before the deadline ended, David Graves, a longtime teacher and coach in Woodford County Schools, filed to run against Rep. Dan Fister, R-Versailles, in House District 56, a heritage Democrat-rich area that Fister has claimed by 12 and 15 points the last two cycles.
In the Senate, Democrats left a couple potentially competitive seats on the table.
Senate Districts 22 and 28, held by Sen. Donald Douglas and Sen. Greg Elkins, both include parts of progressive-leaning Fayette County. Yet, anchored by more conservative counties like Jessamine and Clark, no Democrats appeared on the last day to challenge either of the state senators.
No Democrat filed to challenge Sen. Robin Webb, R-Grayson, who also saw no primary challengers fresh off her 2025 party switch to the GOP.
But they showed up in Louisville, particularly in two districts that were considered their biggest whiffs in the 2022 cycle.
The most politically “purple” district held by Republicans is Sen. Julie Raque Adams’ suburban Louisville Senate District 36. Well-known Democrats Luke Whitehead and Sarah Cole McIntosh — a former University of Louisville basketball player and a former Jefferson County Board of Education member, respectively — have filed.
Adams starts the race off with a massive fundraising advantage, ending the year with $237,000 on hand, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.
Senate District 6, held by staunch social conservative Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, saw two Democrats running campaigns file. Christian Furman, a physician and professor, has already raised more than $76,000 so far, close to twice as much as Tichenor.
Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, told reporters Friday he’d observed an uptick in Democrats filing in the last week of the filing period.
“I’m guessing (the Kentucky Democratic Party) really worked it, or the caucus really worked it, to get people to file for a lot of these seats that had been unopposed previously,” Adams said.
No shakeups at federal level
The entry of former Republican operative Kevin Smith into the 5th Congressional District race against longtime Rep. Hal Rogers was the talk of Frankfort Friday.
But, at least in federal races, it was the only big surprise.
There was some talk of a new Republican with some connections filing in the final hours for Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, which Rep. Andy Barr is leaving in his bid for U.S. Senate, but that never materialized.
In that race, the major Republican players remain Dotson, former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado and Jessamine County pharmaceutical businessman Greg Plucinski. On the Democratic side, former state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson is squaring off against former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo, former Lexington councilman David Kloiber and businesswoman and bourbon writer Erin Petrey. Jimmy Ausbrooks — who made a memorable off-the-cuff speech as a 2022 candidate criticizing what he saw as anti-LGBTQ remarks from Sen. Rand Paul’s wife, Kelley, at Fancy Farm — joined the fray as a Democrat on the last day.
Though the total number of people signed up to run for the U.S. Senate seat opening up with the retirement of Sen. Mitch McConnell is 19, the number of professional candidates is the same as it has been for a month.
On the Democratic side, former candidates Charles Booker and Amy McGrath are running as well as Lexington attorney Logan Forsythe; Louisville horse trainer Dale Romans; and state House Minority Floor Leader Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville.
On the GOP side, the three leading names are still Barr, former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Lexington tech entrepreneur Nate Morris.
