How one Ky. Democrat is confronting the ‘uphill battle’ in a deep-red suburban district
Clark County is not exactly fertile ground for a newcomer Democrat looking to flip a state office.
Tommy Adams, a Democrat running for a Clark County-based House District, knows that.
But Democrats across the state say that Adams’ energetic campaign against Rep. Ryan Dotson, R-Winchester, is the kind of operation needed, even if it loses, to start to turn the tide in conservative areas like House District 73.
“I know that it’s an uphill battle. I’m not delusional. But we’ve been building something in Clark County that is, quite frankly, beautiful. In Clark County, we don’t have an established party with people that I can call to turn folks out. We’re gonna have one now because I’m building it,” Adams said.
Adams, whose views align roughly with other Kentucky Democrats, is running against a pastor and businessman in Dotson who has made religion a central part of his governing platform. An ad from his 2020 campaign that he’s recirculated this cycle emphasizes the “wholesome Christian” values that Dotson will bring to Frankfort.
“The world we live in minimizes the importance of God in government,” Dotson said in the ad. “But I say we need God in every facet of our lives, especially government.”
Adams is a community college instructor who also works on the Wolfe County search & rescue team.
He runs both on his platform, which is similar to that of other state Democrats like Gov. Andy Beshear, and his background – often emphasizing his commitment to running every day for four years straight and his side job on the search & rescue team. He leads with issues like further funding public education and providing more support for needy Kentuckians.
At a fundraising event in Lexington where Beshear gave his endorsement to Adams, the governor called him a “true American hero” for his service on that search & rescue team.
But the district numbers are what they are. Less than 8,000 people in the new district voted Democratic for president while 13,733 cast their ballots for former GOP president Donald Trump. Estimates from Blue Arrow Maps suggest that even the unpopular former Gov. Matt Bevin beat Beshear in the new district, of which Clark County makes up more than 80% of the electorate with the rest filled out by portions of rural and suburban southern Fayette County, by just over four percentage points.
The rest of the district is located in a portion of Southern Fayette County that backed Biden by a razor-thin margin of less than half a percentage point.
In the candidates’ only public appearance alongside each other, Dotson closed his remarks by reminding Adams of the district’s loyalty to the GOP.
“My opponent Tommy Adams, he is a Biden supporter. I just wanted you to know that before you leave the room,” Dotson said.
A new wave?
Geoff Sebesta is a Winchester resident with an unorthodox history in Kentucky politics. He fell far short of the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State in 2019 and runs the campaign for Geoff Young, the Democratic nominee for congress who has sided with Russia in the conflict in Ukraine and been spurned by the state party.
But Sebesta is also a locally involved Clark County Democrat. He’s running for constable there in a contested election. And he’s been impressed by Adams’ run at the seat – Democrats, with Adams among the most energetic, have “won” on all the traditional metrics like yard signs and door-knocking.
“It’s obvious that his style of politics is what the dominant faction inside the KDP (Kentucky Democratic Party) wants. They want somebody who gives good feel-good speeches and is assiduous about his door to door operation,” Sebesta said. “... Tommy’s future in the party is assured. He’s charismatic, easy to get along with, and has an excellent grasp of the issues.”
Adams has raised nearly $30,000 during the general election cycle. The 2020 Democratic candidate only raised $8,000.
One of the reasons Adams cites to argue that the district is indeed winnable is that he thinks Dotson’s standing as a politician is shaky. Dotson fought a hard battle to win in 2020, unseating former GOP representative Les Yates by under 3 percentage points and just two votes in Clark County. Yates and his wife later backed a write-in Republican candidate, Jada Brady, against Dotson.
Adams is quick to point out that Yates and Brady are both on the ballot this year, as judge-executive and coroner candidates.
“These are people that ran in a contested, and sometimes dirty and hateful, race. Folks who go to the polls are going to be reminded of that race,” Adams said.
Jared Smith, a Democrat-aligned consultant and lobbyist, said that there’s a lot of merit to running candidates like Adams even in districts that may not seem sympathetic to Democrats on paper.
“Usually you can find some good volunteers that you didn’t know existed in your community for future campaigns – people that cut their teeth on this campaign. Even if they come up short, they’ll have been through it before so the next ones will be a little bit easier,” Smith said.
Though Dotson acknowledged that Adams has run an unusually “spirited” campaign, he doesn’t believe that Clark County will buck its rightward trend anytime soon. Just this year, along with the state as a whole, the county flipped its registration to become a plurality-Republican county.
Still, having a Democrat run such a campaign bodes well for ‘big D’ Democrats and ‘little D’ democracy, said former Kentucky Democratic Party spokesperson Marisa McNee.
“We can’t show the voters what we’re about and show them that we are the better choice if we’re not competing at all. And it’s the candidates who are at the doors, talking to voters, having conversations – they’re sort of our conduit into the district,” McNee said. “And whenever there’s a (contested) race, the voters get a better deal out of the whole package because whatever you want to say about the outcome of a race like this, the incumbent has to answer a lot more questions than if nobody was there.”
Jabs and jokes
Ryan Dotson has a history of making headlines, and not just as a state legislator.
In 2019, he graced the pages of the New York Post’s gossip section when a celebrity couple, one of them was from Winchester, from the reality TV show Vanderpump Rules wanted to have Dotson officiate their wedding. That changed when a Facebook post from Dotson surfaced where he was critical of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled that same-sex couples are guaranteed the right to marry.
“The devil wants to legalize SIN,” Dotson wrote in 2015, the same year the case was decided. “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it RIGHT!!!!”
In a statement, Dotson emphasized that he was not homophobic but that he “must stand firmly on the Bible and its teachings.”
Dotson’s strong social conservatism has been criticized in both his legislation as well as other social media remarks.
Adams has hammered Dotson for his support of a ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. He also calls Dotson’s marquee piece of legislation in his two-year Frankfort career – he carried a bill that banned transgender girls from girls sports in Kentucky – “a disgrace,” executed only to “stir up drama and hate.”
The Kentucky Democratic Party also poked fun at Dotson, who said on Facebook once that he “cast a demon” out of an apartment building in Winchester.
Dotson said the incident took place about 25 years ago and involved an addict. He added that belief in demons plays a role in the Christianity he and members of his church practice.
“It’s indicative of what the party is doing now. It’s really trying to come after me and attack my faith, which is a new all new low that’s enraged local churches and Christians in our community. They thought they were hurting me, but they didn’t hurt me. They hurt themselves,” Dotson said.
Adams claims that Dotson is a unique opponent in that he’s not personally popular.
“90% of the negatives that I’m hearing about him are from people who don’t like him because of how he has handled himself outside of his job, so I’m pulling in Republican votes and independent votes from people who can’t stand this man,” Adams said.
That’s an illusion, Dotson said.
“In his mind, he really thinks he’s got an opportunity,” Dotson said.
This story was originally published November 4, 2022 at 10:00 AM with the headline "How one Ky. Democrat is confronting the ‘uphill battle’ in a deep-red suburban district."
