Meet the 2 Democrats vying to challenge KY Sen. Lindsey Tichenor in November
State Sen. Lindsey Tichenor quickly garnered attention during her first term in Frankfort, becoming a prominent figure shortly after being sworn in to represent Senate District 6.
Tichenor, a Republican, is now well-known for being on the front lines of the “Liberty” movement in Kentucky since taking office in 2023. She’s filed legislation that focused on cultural issues, including banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools during this year’s session and restricting access to drag shows in 2024, though neither bill ultimately became law.
She’s also played a key role in education policy, serving as the vice chair of the Senate Education Committee and filing priority legislation this year to increase fiscal oversight of public schools. She said during session that legislation, Senate Bill 3, was a response to Fayette County Public Schools and Jefferson County Public Schools grappling with significant budget deficits.
“I came in as a new person into the political scene,” Tichenor said in a recent interview with the Herald-Leader. “I had never run for office before. I had never been involved, so I did not come in with any aspirations of leadership or moving forward. ... And I believe this very firmly: I will go where the Lord leads me next, but I’m here because I want to do what’s right for the constituents of Kentucky.”
Not everyone is happy with Tichenor’s work in the Capitol, including two Democrats who are vying for the nomination to challenge her in the general election. Tichenor is not facing an opponent in the Republican primary.
Christian Furman, a geriatric and palliative care physician, and Chaz Stoess, an autoworker at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant, both echoed similar thoughts on Tichenor in interviews with the Herald-Leader: Her rhetoric feeds into divisiveness and is inadequate to represent part of Jefferson, Oldham and Trimble counties.
Christian Furman
Furman said she decided to run for office because she wants to improve the life and health of Kentuckians.
She also believes Tichenor is “unfit” to serve in office. Furman referenced a social media post on X from Tichenor, in which she responded to Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman urging residents to contact their legislators about House Bill 1, the federal tax scholarship program bill.
“Don’t call us,” Tichenor said in the post. “It’s going to pass, and then we’ll override the veto.”
“Our job as a senator is to listen to our constituents and do what they want us to do right to represent them, and she was doing the exact opposite of saying, ‘don’t call me,’” Furman said. “So, it’s just inappropriate.”
Furman added Tichenor pushes for “divisive” legislation, including banning DEI in K-12 schools and honoring Charlie Kirk, a popular but controversial conservative podcaster who was fatally shot in September 2025. Tichenor was the co-sponsor of Senate Bill 31 this year, which would have designated Oct. 14 as “Charlie Kirk Day” in Kentucky.
“We’re trying to bring people together,” Furman said. “We’re trying to improve the care of everybody, and her stuff is divisive.”
Furman was elected to the City of Prospect City Council in 2024. She also served as a Congressional Aging and Policy Fellow in Washington, D.C., and said that experience inspired her to run for office.
“We need more doctors in Frankfort making decisions about health care. Because what happens is, there’s (these) unintended consequences (with policy), and if you were in the health care, you would know that this would be a consequence,” Furman said.
If elected, Furman’s priorities include pushing for pre-K for all, fully funding public education and protecting the environment. She said she believes she’s the best Democratic candidate because of her political experience and fundraising. According to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, Furman has around $60,000 cash on hand as of the latest May 5 report.
“I’ve been in public office. I’m currently a Prospect City Council member, so I have the experience. ... I’ve testified before in Frankfort, but also we’ve been able to just raise a lot of money. And I hate to say it, but that is how you can send mailers, and you can buy the ads,” Furman said.
Chaz Stoess
This is Stoess’ first time running for public office, but he considers himself “politically adjacent,” and said he’s always kept up with politics.
“I did six years in 20th Special Forces Group for the Kentucky Army National Guard, and there was one year our executive officer for a few years was the head of Homeland Security here in Kentucky under the Bevin administration, and he had hand-picked I think five or six of us to go up and work for Homeland Security for a few weeks ... so I had an opportunity to meet members of the Bevin administration,” Stoess said. “I’ve also had an opportunity to meet several members of Gov. Beshear’s administration.”
This year was the first time Stoess advocated for labor policy in Frankfort.
“I’ve been trying to meet people everywhere that they are, including going to their homes, talking to them in the grocery (store) and talking to them at different events. And what separates me most is those opportunities to go to Frankfort and lay those foundations,” he said. “I’ve met with Democrats and Republicans, members of the House and the Senate, and I’ve been able to start building out that foundation and making those relationships to show that, ‘Hey, this is somebody that we can work with, this is somebody that we can talk to (and) knows what they’re speaking about.’”
As a worker at Ford Motor Company’s Kentucky Truck Plant and a union member, Stoess said he wants to support working families, protect farmlands from big businesses and defend veterans. He has around $4,200 cash on hand, according to a report filed with KREF.
He believes Tichenor is pushing her own agenda and “not doing anything to benefit the people in her district.”
“I think she’s done a lot of things to continue to push out rhetoric that comes from Washington and not actually trying to do anything that benefits the people of the commonwealth,” Stoess said.
Stoess said he thinks he can beat Tichenor if chosen as the Democratic nominee because he’s shown up for the community and proved he’s reliable. He would also take a bipartisan approach when working with lawmakers if he represented the district, he said.
“I know that there are several bills that have come through Frankfort that because they had a ‘D’ next to their name (and) never gained any traction, so they had a Republican sponsor so that they could get it across the finish line,” Stoess said. “If that’s what it takes, it’s about the people. It’s not about me having all the glory. It’s about doing right by the people.”
Lindsey Tichenor
Tichenor said she decided to run for office because of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, Beshear placed capacity restrictions on businesses and implemented a mask mandate. He also prohibited in-person mass gatherings, including at church services, which still draws stark criticism from Republicans.
“I’ve always paid attention to politics at the national level, (and) international politics is always interesting to me,” Tichenor said. “But at the state level, it never directly affected me until COVID, and it woke me up to realize how vital it is to be plugged in at the local level and at the state level, and that is what drove me to run for office.”
While Tichenor has aligned herself with the Liberty faction of the GOP in Frankfort, she said that wasn’t part of the plan. The ideology varies among different legislators. Some want to adhere to traditional, largely Christian, norms. Others were dissatisfied with the state’s response with the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Tichenor, it means protecting religious and medical freedom, and parents’ rights to protect and make decisions for their children.
“I think ... the medical freedom issue was just a removal of individual liberty when people were forced to take a vaccine that they disagreed with or lose their jobs,” Tichenor said, referring to mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine. “That was a huge overreach of our government into a person’s health and their medical freedom to make that decision for themselves.”
Tichenor’s drive to prioritize education policy stems from her family’s public school experience. Along with looking into data on low literacy and math scores in schools, Tichenor said some of the curriculum and books her children were exposed to concerned her.
“We spent a lot of time my first session working on legislation that laid a framework for parents to be able to report inappropriate books to the school board so that they could be removed,” Tichenor said. “I don’t think we moved far enough in there.”
She’s also pushed for banning DEI initiatives in K-12 public schools because she believes it has not helped students or closed achievement gaps.
“It is an incredible amount of money that is being spent on DEI initiatives, both at the administrative level, (a) tremendous amount of waste and jobs that were created to push DEI, and we have not in any way seen improvements in our education,” Tichenor said.
In this election cycle, she has around $40,400 cash on hand, according to a report filed with KREF.
