In a strong field, here is the best choice for 6th District Democratic Primary | Opinion
Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District hasn’t had an open race since 2004, and this year, Democrats have fielded an unusually strong field in the primary.
Sixth District voters are lucky: any of the candidates, David Kloiber, Erin Petrey, Cherlynn Stevenson, and Zach Dembo would make an excellent choice to represent Kentucky in Congress. They are all smart, have varied backgrounds that would serve them well, and clearly want to move Kentucky forward.
Stevenson, with her experience as a state representative and service to this state, stands out in particular. But we are giving the nod to Dembo because of a unique combination of life and job experience that we believe will make him the best candidate to win.
A Lexington native, Dembo started his professional life in Teach for America, moving to Mississippi to teach at impoverished schools in the Delta. After law school, he went into the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and spent four years on active duty. After leaving the Navy, he joined the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division for three years before becoming a policy adviser to Gov. Andy Beshear in 2020. He then joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lexington.
But after President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, and Dembo saw the full extent of how much Trump would politicize the Justice department to go after his enemies, Dembo left what he says was a dream job. In short order, he decided he would run for this nomination.
Dembo had an elite education at Stanford University and the University of Michigan, but says his mother’s experience growing up on a tobacco farm in Garrard County has kept him well attuned to the needs of rural voters, many of whom he believes are increasingly dissatisfied with Trump and D.C. politics in general.
“I can easily see why a voter In Powell County or Garrard County would look at both Markwayne Mullin and Nancy Pelosi making millions off of stock trading, and say ‘these people aren’t working for me,’” Dembo told the Herald-Leader editorial board. If Democrats flip the House as predicted, and keep up with the same old practices, “that would be complete malfeasance and a huge opportunity loss we have to remake not just the party, but frankly, the country’s relationship with D.C., because it’s clearly broken.”
To that end, if elected, Dembo says while he does not think Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished, he would hold officers accountable and try to reform and remake the broken immigration policies of both and the Biden and Trump administrations.
He would work to recreate the Farm Bill, which has been operating on a continuing resolution since 2018, because Kentucky farmers are already hurting under Trump’s tariff policy and could be helped through better legislation.
“This administration and Congress have taken such an anti-farmer attack on people that, theoretically, they claimed were their base,” Dembo said.
He is also interested in the remaking of America’s broken health care system, adding a public option and subsidies back to the Affordable Care Act, and creating more oversight of the insurance companies who are making such huge profits at the expense of patients. To Dembo, health care includes the reproductive freedom that has been lost since Roe v. Wade was overturned. He would support codifying the parameters of Roe case into law.
Dembo recognizes the massive legislative cleanup that will have to take place after two years of a Republican-held Congress that has ceded all its power to Trump, enabling him to enter forever wars in the Middle East and enrich himself with massive corruption. We agree it’s helpful to have a representative who can help Kentuckians, who understands international affairs, has experience in rooting out white collar corruption, and knows how to issue subpoenas.
Dembo is a new political face, but he also has a deep political and governmental background, and he can appeal to voters across political lines. We believe he is the best choice for the Sixth District primary.
The Herald-Leader believes the tradition of candidate endorsements enhances interest and participation in the civic process, whether readers agree with the newspaper’s recommendations or not. The paper has unusual access to candidates and their backgrounds, and considers part of its responsibility to help citizens sort through campaign issues and rhetoric.
An endorsement represents the consensus of the editorial board. The decisions have no connection to the news coverage of political races and are wholly separate from journalists who cover those races.
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