Lexington, rural counties faced with marked differences in candidates for KY Senate 27 seat
On abortion, a private school funding measure and many other issues, there are sharp differences in the candidates for Kentucky Senate District 27.
The race pits a lawmaker with nearly a decade of experience against a first-time political candidate in a district made up of the northern part of Fayette County and seven other counties: Bourbon, Harrison, Nicholas, Fleming, Robertson, Mason and Rowan.
The incumbent, Republican Sen. Steve West of Paris, voted for laws that have effectively banned abortion in Kentucky except in medical emergencies.
“I’m pro-life. I think a baby in the womb is a human being,” West said. “They have Constitutional rights.”
His opponent, Democrat Molly Gene Crain of Lexington, said she would favor a return to the standard in place before the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the longstanding Roe v. Wade standard.
Under Roe, women could choose to have an abortion until the point of viability.
With that unlikely, Crain said she would favor the legislature adding exceptions to the current law that would allow abortions in cases of rape in incest.
“The legislature should not try to insert itself in decisions between a woman and her doctor,” Crain said.
West said he would not favor adding exceptions to the current law in Kentucky. The cases in which the exceptions apply are rare, he said.
West also said that women in Kentucky “are still free to drive across state lines to get an abortion. So, the exceptions really never come into play.”
Party registration
Party registration in the largely-rural district favors Democrats over Republicans, 46,220 to 38,455, but many of those Democrats are conservative on social issues.
Then-President Donald Trump swept every county of the district except the Fayette County section by wide margins in 2020 in his losing reelection bid against Joe Biden.
West had received $104,361 for the general election as of Oct. 8, which included money carried forward from a prior campaign, and spent $70,258, leaving a balance of $34,102.
His campaign had received money from several political action committees representing interests that sometimes have business before the legislature, which is common for sitting lawmakers.
Those included bankers, attorneys, realtors and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Crain had received a total of $132,169 in the general election, including $50,000 she put into the campaign and several contributions from labor unions, and spent $31,487, leaving a balance of just over $100,000 available to spend in the last month of the campaign.
‘I hustle. I care’
Crain, 33, who lives in the Meadowthorpe neighborhood in Lexington, is making her first run for political office.
She is a graduate of Transylvania University with a degree in in writing, rhetoric and communication and has a master’s degree in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University.
She has a law degree from the University of Kentucky but has not taken the bar exam.
Crain and her husband, Rob Fenton, have a business called Kestrel Consulting, described as a policy solutions and public relations firm, and she and her sister own a family farm in Fleming County that is leased out to a cattle producer.
Crain formerly worked at Emerge Kentucky, which works to increase the number of Democratic women running for office, and Kentucky Voices for Health.
Crain said if she is elected, one of her priorities would be making it easier for first-time farmers to get money for land.
Farmers face rising land prices and the state is losing farming operations, Crain said.
Her idea is for the legislature to set up a fund under the state Agriculture Department to help first-time farmland buyers get a lower interest rate on a loan. That would help boost the economy of rural Kentucky, she said.
“I don’t really feel like people have the choices they used to to be able to stay there, to grow and thrive,” in rural areas, Crain said. “And everything else suffers as a result.”
Crain said she would also want to work on getting money appropriated to improve the quality of health care in rural Kentucky, including long-term care, and for funding to address roadwork needs in the district in a more timely way.
She also said she would favor a state incentive to help farmers develop solar facilities.
“It would be great if we could have energy companies paying farmers for the solar they have,” she said.
Crain said she supports full funding for public education and instituting universal pre-kindergarten in Kentucky.
Crain acknowledged it might be tough to get much done with Democrats outnumbered 4 to 1 in House, but said she cares about “trying to find things we all agree on and being thoughtful about policy.”
Asked why people should vote for her instead of West, Crain said, “I hustle I care. Like I said, you can’t help out if you don’t show up.”
‘I am a conservative’
West, 54, is from Paris and has held the 27th District Senate seat since 2015.
He won a special election that year to replace Walter Blevins, a Democrat who resigned to become Rowan County judge-executive, then won elections to full four-year terms in 2016 and 2020 by comfortable margins as the legislature trended Republican.
West is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University with a degree in communications and completed law school at Northern Kentucky University.
West practices real-estate law; is a real-estate broker and owns a firm called Kentucky Prime Realty; and is a cattle farmer.
His wife, Cindy West, has a business that provides home-school curriculum. The couple has three children.
West said one of his proudest accomplishments in the legislature was successfully sponsoring a measure in 2022 called the Read to Succeed bill, aimed at trying to make sure all Kentucky students could read by the end of third grade.
He also pointed to bills the legislature approved in 2021 to limit the power of the governor during emergencies — requiring legislative approval for extensions of emergency orders — and to give lawmakers more authority over administrative regulations issued in an emergency.
Both measures were a response to actions Gov. Gov Andy Beshear took during the COVID-19 pandemic aimed at cutting down on the spread of the disease, such as limits on in-person dining and shutting down in-person classes in schools.
Many GOP lawmakers felt the governor went too far with his orders.
“The governor can’t just issue executive orders and expect that they be given the status of rule of law,” West said.
Beshear vetoed both measures but the Republican supermajorities in the Senate and House overrode the vetoes.
The state Supreme Court turned aside Beshear’s challenge to the laws.
West said he has voted with other Republicans to lower the state income-tax rate; pass pro-business legislation that has helped the state’s economy; put responsible budgets in place; and has worked to get hundreds of millions for schools, roads and other infrastructure projects in the district.
Other high-profile measures West has voted in favor of include medical cannabis -- a bill he sponsored -- and sports betting.
In the 2024 session, bills that West sponsored or co-sponsored covered a range of issues: expanding the medical conditions that would entitle someone to receive medical marijuana with a prescription; placing limits on the locations of adult entertainment businesses and drag shows featuring “explicitly sexual conduct;” barring any requirement for someone to get a COVID shot as a condition of employment, school enrollment or medical treatment; and eliminating no-excuse in-person absentee voting.
West supported legislation that stopped efforts in Lexington and Louisville to bar landlords from refusing certain types of payment, such as federal rent vouchers.
The rules interfered with property rights and represented an unlawful “taking” of the value of the property, West said.
He also opposed limits Lexington placed on short-term rentals, such as Airbnb, saying it appeared they could be applied subjectively and also interfered with property rights.
West said that if Crain is elected, she would not be able to help the district as much as him given Democrats’ weak hand in the legislature.
After nearly a decade in the Senate, West said voters don’t have to guess about where he stands or his priorities, including protecting Constitutional rights.
“I am a conservative,” he said. “My opponent is far left.”
Here is how the candidates compare on some issues:
Constitutional amendments
Voters will decide on two proposals to amend the state Constitution in November.
The first, Amendment 1, would bar people who are not U.S. citizens from voting.
West said he supports the amendment, while Crain opposesit, saying it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote.
Amendment 2 has received far more attention.
If voters approve the measure, it would allow Kentucky lawmakers to give taxpayer money to private schools, religious schools and charter schools. The state Constitution currently bars spending public money on non-public schools.
Opponents fear the measure would hurt state funding for public schools which serve most of the students in Kentucky, resulting in layoffs in schools.
Supporters of the amendment have argued it would give parents more choices on where to send their children to school, including helping get kids out of failing schools.
West said he supports the amendment.
“One of the key areas where we think choice is really, really bad is K-through-12 education,” he said. “To me, it’s about the parents and helping them.”
Crain opposes Amendment 2, calling it bad fiscal policy.
“Voting no on Amendment 2 allows us to keep taxpayer dollars in public education,” Crain said. “ Voting yes sends those monies to private schools and charter schools that are fiscally unaccountable to the state.”
The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, which opposes the measure, said in a report that the expected source of money for private schools under Amendment 2 would be “reduced state contributions” to public education.
But West said it is not a given that the legislature would reduce appropriations to public schools in order to help private schools.
He said that in his opinion, lawmakers would be more inclined to boost money for education overall as they put together a funding mechanism to help parents send their kids to private school, not hurt public education.
“I kind of bristle at this idea that the evil Republicans are out to destroy public education,” he said.
West said Republican state lawmakers increased funding for public schools by hundreds of millions of dollars in the last two budgets.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
One of the primary social issues the legislature wrangled with in the 2024 session were measures to limit diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices and programs on college campuses.
The American Psychological Association defines DEI as a “conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially populations that have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.”
Supporters say the goal in educational settings is to try to establish fairness for underrepresented and marginalized groups of people.
But DEI programs have become a target of Republicans across the country who argue they promote a “woke” — meaning liberal or progressive — agenda and amount to “reverse discrimination,” as one Kentucky senator said.
One bill considered in the Kentucky legislature this year on college DEI porgrams proposed to ban “discriminatory concepts” in settings such as training sessions and orientations — concepts that included “race scapegoating,” the argument that that some individuals are “inherently privileged,” and any suggestion that “Americans are not created equal.”
The bills didn’t pass, but DEI measures are likely to resurface in the legislature in 2025.
Crain, who was on a DEI board at the UK law school, said she supports DEI programs in higher education.
They are important because “we (i.e., all minorities) are still experiencing reverberations from decades of discrimination” that continue to have an impact on society, Crain said.
“DEI boards exist to help institutions reflect on what we might be missing while engaging in earnest efforts of inclusivity,” she said.
West said whether he could support a DEI bill would depend on how it was written.
If the goal is to stamp out racism and inequality, that’s good, but some DEI programs have been questionable and promoted a far-left ideology, West said.
Red flag bill
A Republican senator pushed a proposal in 2024 for the state to have a way for authorities to remove guns from people who might be a danger to themselves or others, often called a red flag bill.
Other Republican lawmakers expressed strong opposition and the idea didn’t get anywhere in the 2024 session.
Crain said if she is elected, she would support such a measure, calling the orders “a great tool for aiding law enforcement in reducing rural suicide rates and gun deaths that occur as a result of mental health crises.”
West said he would oppose a red-flag law, saying the state already has a process to take guns from people if needed.
This story was originally published October 22, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
