Here are 7 statehouse races to watch in Central Kentucky

We don’t know what will happen on November 8.

Publicly available polling is scant in any of the races that will determine the future of Frankfort policy making.

But we do know where the attention, money and attacks are focusing in statehouse elections. Those races often tend to be the most dramatic ones when results come rolling in on election night. And they impact Kentuckians in a big way – bigger than they’re often given credit for.

Even the most optimistic Democrats wouldn’t predict that they’ll flip either of the GOP’s veto-proof supermajorities in Frankfort, some are waxing optimistic about races once thought to be safe for Republicans. Meanwhile, Republicans are looking to grow their impressive 75-25 and 30-8 majorities in the House and Senate respectively.

The size of that majority still matters, though. Some Republican priority bills – such as the one that funded public charter schools in the state and shifted more control of library boards to county elected officials – could not have passed if the GOP majority in Frankfort were slimmer.

So what races for the state legislature should you be watching that Tuesday? Here’s a list of interesting Central and Eastern Kentucky battlegrounds.

House District 93: New district, new faces in Dem-leaning 93rd

House District 93 pits established Democratic activist Lamin Swann against successful GOP businessman Kyle Whalen in a new Lexington district shipped over from Eastern Kentucky due to population shifts. It covers much of South-Central Fayette County between New Circle Road and the Jessamine County line.

Whalen, a businessman in the construction industry, has significant resources at his disposal – he’s got the backing of Mitch McConnell and Andy Barr’s PACs, and has out-raised Swann by a factor of five.

However, Swann has the benefit of running in a district that should be Democrat-friendly. It’s estimated to have swung for Democratic President Joe Biden by 17 percentage points. Swann is also run for office in the past, having fallen short of the 88th House District seat and an at-large seat on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council.

House District 56: Is Woodford still loyal to Democrats?

Rep. Dan Fister, R-Versailles, broke precedent in 2020 with his win in House District 56, a Woodford County-centric seat. Democrats had ruled the roost in that district for ages, but Fister won Woodford County and rode the 2020 Trump wave to take office against Lexington’s Lamar Allen.

Now he’s got a Woodford County Democrat in Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift running against him.

Republicans who were in control of the redistricting process shifted the 56th to become much more favorable for Republicans, swapping a swath of Lexington for a section of rural Jessamine County. As a result, the district’s 2020 presidential election results swung from a three percentage point Trump win to a 17 point victory.

But some Democrats are hopeful that Woodford County can deliver the Democrats a flip in the district, though Vandegrift has run a campaign trying to paint Fister as out of touch with the district – that includes pointing out Fister’s strong anti-abortion beliefs and his support for a bill that would have given a tax break for private aircraft owners.

Fister, meanwhile, is touting his ties to the statehouse GOP which largely controls policy making in Frankfort as well as his support for the bill that aims to eliminate Kentucky’s personal income tax.

In mid-October, the Herald-Leader reported on a sexist Facebook post authored by Vandegrift 14 years ago, which Fister’s campaign has sharply criticized.

Vandegrift and Fister are neck-and-neck in fundraising, with Fister up on his opponent $90,000 to $83,000.

House District 73: Battle in Winchester

Clark County flipped Republican several years ago. But Tommy Adams, a community college teacher and search & rescue professional in Winchester, is trying to flip it back to the Democratic party in the new House District 73.

Dotson, a pastor in Winchester, won his first general election contest easily in 2020, but only narrowly defeated incumbent former representative Les Yates in the GOP primary that May.

The current representative had run for office before, but found success in a run for state representative. Dotson carried a bill this past session through the House that banned transgender girls from participation in girls sports. Adams is running a campaign centered around supporting public education, abortion rights and the rights of minority groups.

Dotson leads Adams in fundraising, but not by much. He has raised about $39,000 to Adams’ $29,000.

The district’s voters are primarily in Clark County, where Trump won by 32 points but former Kentucky governor Matt Bevin only won by 7 percentage points. It also includes portions of Southern Fayette County which used to belong to Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson, D-Lexington.

Senate District 20: blast from the past in potentially competitive senate race

Senate District 20 pits two big names in 1990s and ‘00s Kentucky politics from both sides of the aisle against each other. Frankfort-based Democrat Teresa Barton is taking on Republican Gex Williams of Northern Kentucky. Barton was the Democratic Franklin County Judge-Executive, but left that post to take a position with Republican former governor Ernie Fletcher. Williams became a fixture in 1990s Kentucky politics as one of the further right members of the Senate, but had largely left politics after losing in the 1998 4th U.S. Congressional District to Ken Lucas, who flipped the seat blue.

“Teresa may literally be the only (Democrat) of all the people who live in that district who could potentially win this race,” Tres Watson, a former spokesman for the Republican Party of Kentucky, said on his podcast Kentucky Politics Weekly.

The campaign has taken some strange turns. Barton was caught on camera removing a Williams sign from a business, and Barton has complained of Williams supporters “accosting” her – the Owen County GOP released a video in an attempt to rebuff Barton’s claim.

Williams won a crowded four-way primary in May, and has allied himself with the ‘Liberty’ wing of the GOP – popular in his native Northern Kentucky – without disowning the Republican establishment in Frankfort.

The district mostly mirrors that of the old 7th Senate District, with Anderson County swapped for pockets of rural and suburban Boone and Kenton Counties in Northern Kentucky. Franklin County is the largest population center with 51,541 people; portions of Boone and Kenton County included in the district total a combined 32,631 people. The rest is filled out in between by Owen, Carroll and Gallatin Counties.

Franklin County traditionally supports Democrats in state level races. Boone and Kenton counties are strong Republican territory. The middle counties are filled with heritage Democrats who have often swung for the GOP in recent years.

Barton has outraised Williams, $130,000 to about $103,000.

Lexington Senate Districts

All three Senate districts that ring around the southern edge of Lexington are thought to be Republican-leaning by those in the GOP.

Each of the districts sided significantly with former president Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats like Senate Minority Floor Leader Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, see the Republicans’ treatment of Lexington as a textbook example of gerrymandering. Despite the city’s tremendous growth from 2010 to 2020, it went from having one Senate seat solely within the boundary of the Fayette County to just one. It used to have only three Senate districts that paired regions of the county with outlying counties, but now it has six

Thomas, has a new district that remained much the same – essentially the territory within New Circle Road, which is heavily Democratic. The other six districts are comprised of pockets Fayette County got paired with much more conservative counties. Fayette Countians don’t make up a majority of the electorate in any of those six districts.

In Senate District 34, a Madison County teacher is taking on Sen. Jared Carpenter, R-Richmond, chair of the Banking & Insurance Committee. Carpenter has been a fixture in the Senate since winning the seat 12 years ago. He’s won by at least 29 percentage points in every election.

But the district has gotten more urban on the whole, adding the outer Lexington areas of Andover and Hamburg and dropping Rockcastle County. The Democratic challenger Susan Cintra is also no pushover, according to Democrat-aligned consultant and lobbyist Jared Smith.

“(Cintra) is not going to roll over. Jared’s going to have to run a good campaign. If he does that, he should be okay, but I wouldn’t just think this is a wash,” Smith said.

Carpenter, who’s been an effective fundraiser during his tenure, has outraised Cintra by a significant margin – he’s hauled in more than $100,000 for his reelection bid while Cintra hadn’t cracked $20,000 as of her 30 day pre-election report.

Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville, is facing Democratic challenger Chuck Eddy for his Senate District 22 seat. Douglas, a doctor, made a splash this past session when he sponsored a bill that ended the state’s COVID-19 emergency one month earlier than planned — that led to Kentucky losing out on $50 million in COVID-linked SNAP benefits.

He also, with the help of a major spending spree where he got help from out-of-state conservative groups, soundly defeated Andrew Cooperrider in a closely watched GOP primary. Cooperrider is now a candidate for state treasurer.

Eddy is a retiree who formed the group “Republicans for Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman” during the 2019 election. Now a Democrat, Eddy is running on public education, abortion rights, medical marijuana legalization and supporting the poor. Douglas has campaigned on lowering taxes and supporting police – he touts an endorsement from the state Fraternal Order of Police, which almost exclusively endorsed Republicans this cycle.

Douglas crushed his Democratic opponent in a 2021 special election, but the district got more Democrat-friendly during redistricting as it lost Mercer and Washington counties while still retaining a chunk of Fayette. The portion of Fayette is roughly the same population as Jessamine County.

After a massive amount spending in the primary, Douglas’ fundraising efforts have largely cooled. He raised about $60,000 in his general election bid. Eddy raised about $18,000.

A lot of candidates, Democrat and Republican, cried foul when the new map was first unveiled for Senate District 12. It used to be the second Fayette-only district in the Senate.

Republican Amanda Mays Bledsoe, a Lexington-Fayette Urban County councilwoman, was the only candidate that survived redistricting. Cooperrider, Lexington attorney Ross Mann and former candidate Paula Setser-Kissick were all drawn out despite having already declared their candidacies.

The district now pairs a chunk of Southeastern Fayette County with Woodford, Mercer and Boyle counties.

Democrats were able to field Bill O’Brien as a candidate in the district after Setser-Kissick, who nearly knocked off retiring Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, R-Lexington in 2018 and was redistricted out of it this cycle, withdrew in August. O’Brien, a public affairs and communications professional in Lexington, has not posted any significant amount of fundraising.

Bledsoe has been one of the top fundraisers of this cycle, raising $168,000 thus far.