May 17
Kentucky Primaries
May 13, 2022
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Tuesday, May 17th is the date for Kentucky’s 2022 primary election, although in-person early voting began on Thursday, May 12th. A plethora of candidates are on the ballot this year, including all 100 state House and 19 state Senate seats, six U.S. House seats, one U.S. Senate seat, and hundreds of local elected positions – including Mayor of Louisville. Kentucky’s statewide offices will not be up until 2023, but the conclusion of the 2022 primary will quickly pivot attention to the many Republican hopefuls attempting to defeat Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in 18 months.
Governor’s races notwithstanding, the Commonwealth’s electorate has moved dramatically toward the GOP over the past three election cycles. There is a 75-25 House GOP majority, and Senate Republicans occupy 30 of 38 seats. Redistricting is expected to further bolster those numbers, particularly in the House, where this is the first cycle under GOP-drawn maps in a century.
With supermajorities all but assured through November, there is a renewed emphasis on primaries as the determining elections for defining the ideological center, and the leadership slate, in the state legislature. Veteran Republican members in urbanizing districts face real challenges next week from an emerging “liberty” faction. The handful of liberty candidates are suddenly well funded and organized, and they are running to the right of traditional Republicans who are perceived not to have pushed hard enough against the Governor’s COVID and vaccine responses.
In both the House and Senate, it is important to remember that politics remains truly local, and a low-turnout, mid-term ballot populated with myriad local races introduces much uncertainty across the state.
A complete summary of the primary election results will be sent Tuesday night.
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20 sitting House Republicans are defending against primary challengers, a group that includes two pairs of incumbents lumped together in redistricting. Also included are another six open seats from GOP retirements that feature primaries. Redistricting yielded a handful of “new” districts pitting newcomers from both parties against each other.
Many of these incumbent Republicans should safely cruise to their party’s nomination, but there are a handful of races to watch because of the emergence of these liberty candidates – many in Northern Kentucky – where several House veterans face well-funded and organized opposition.
Those facing serious liberty candidate challengers include Licensing & Occupations Committee Chairman Adam Koenig, Judiciary Chairman Ed Massey, Tourism & Outdoor Recreation Chairman Kim King, and Appropriations & Revenue Vice-Chair Brandon Reed. Two members of House Leadership - Speaker David Osborne and Floor Leader Steven Rudy - have primaries but are expected to emerge unscathed. The retirement of House Whip Chad McCoy leaves an open seat in the Bardstown area. No Democrat filed to run there, so that seat will remain in GOP hands.
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Half of the 38-member state Senate is up for re-election this year. Democrats barely put up a fight this primary season, choosing not to even field candidates in open seats, including in a district that is currently held by a retiring Democrat. At the candidate filing deadline, multiple hopefuls had filed under the old Senate maps, and they have subsequently been removed from the ballot.
Three sitting GOP Senate members face same-party opposition this month (Senators Robby Mills, Donald Douglas, and Jared Carpenter). Among those, the race garnering the most attention is that between Senator Douglas and liberty challenger Andrew Cooperrider. Douglas is the shortest-tenured member of the Senate, having replaced the late Tom Buford in a November special election. His Senate GOP colleagues ensured the freshman lawmaker had a record on which to run this spring, allowing him to sponsor some of the highest profile bills from that chamber, including one that expedited the conclusion of the Governor’s state of emergency. His opponent, Cooperrider, is riding a wave of big-money/anti-Beshear sentiment. The challenger is a coffee shop owner who refused to comply with many of Beshear’s COVID mandates after leading out on a petition for his impeachment.
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Kentucky is home to six U.S. House districts, and the five GOP members running for re-election face no serious primary threat. All were endorsed by former President Trump, and all were the beneficiaries of redistricting.
The only race with any intrigue is that to replace retiring Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth in the Democratic urban stronghold of Louisville. Two Democratic state legislators square off in the primary – state Sen. Morgan McGarvey and state Rep. Attica Scott.
Scott has had a vocal, but largely inconsequential, tenure in the legislature (not uncommon for members of the minority caucus), but she has built a local following as a high-profile African-American participant in the civil unrest following the death of Breonna Taylor. McGarvey is the presumptive front-runner, is very well funded, and enjoys the support of the Democratic establishment. McGarvey is all over the local airwaves and enjoys bipartisan respect within Frankfort and his Louisville Senate district. Still, in a Democratic primary, a McGarvey victory against a highly visible woman of color in this increasingly left-leaning electorate is not guaranteed.
The blue 3rd Congressional District was left in-tact during the 2022 redistricting plan, meaning a mainstream Democratic candidate starts the general election season at a tremendous advantage. The GOP race is a six-person field of relative unknowns, attempting to reclaim a seat that was last held by Republicans in 2006. Rhonda Palazzo is perhaps the best-known, having run in the 2020 cycle against Yarmuth but earning only 37% of the vote. Louisville businessman Stuart Ray has raised the most money and is the most visible of the field.
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Senator Rand Paul faces token primary opposition and will easily return to the November ballot. His presumptive general election opponent is Charles Booker, a former state legislator from the heavily African-American populated western end of Louisville. Booker gained some notoriety quickly going to the defense of striking coal miners in eastern Kentucky in 2019, from which he springboarded the “from the hood to the holler” tag line, which is now a book of the same name. |
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