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The Kentucky GOP would scoff at the notion that Democrats might be on the comeback trail in the eight-county Jackson Purchase, the old “Democratic Gibraltar.”
“I absolutely believe we are,” said Jennifer Smith, a longtime Paducah party activist who was a Kentucky delegate to the Democratic National Convention. “There has been so much bad legislation out of Frankfort and so many horrible things Donald Trump has said and done.”
Smith said the yard sign wars reflect disenchantment with the increasingly extremist and unhinged Trump. Trump signs are scarcer than they were in 2016 and 2020, according to Smith.
Still, she’s not sure “whether those individuals are not voting for him or they are ashamed to show they are.” Either way, she said Harris-Walz signs are more plentiful than Biden-Harris signs were in 2020 and this year before he bowed out for his vice president.
Smith said that while her party is fired up, she’s also “talked to a shocking number of Republicans locally who are not voting for Trump. All that’s positive.”
For more than 150 years, the Purchase was the state’s most reliably Democratic region. But as Kentucky turned ever more Republican in the late 20th century, the old Gibraltar started to crumble. Arguably, the nadir of Democratic fortunes in the Purchase came in 2022. For the first time ever, no Democrat filed for the state legislature.
This time, four Democrats tossed hats in the ring for the state House of Representatives against four of the five GOP incumbents who represent all of the state’s westernmost region. The fifth one is unopposed. (Neither of the region’s two Republican senators are up for reelection.)
Meanwhile, the Purchase hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress since 1992. Republican presidential candidates have carried Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Marshall and McCracken counties — and the state — every four years since 2000.
Republicans hold sway in county courthouses. Fifty years ago, only about 10 percent of Purchase voters were registered Republicans. Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats on voter rolls in Graves, Marshall, and McCracken counties, and trail by 610 or fewer in Ballard, Carlisle, Calloway, and Hickman counties. The gap has also shrunk to a little more than 1,400 in Fulton County.
Trump is a heavy favorite to win mostly conservative Kentucky for a third time on Nov. 5. First District Congressman James Comer (R-Frankfort) expects to notch another term, though Democrats say his challenger, 30-year-old single mom Erin Marshall of Frankfort, is the party’s first viable candidate in two dozen years. She and Comer squared off at the annual Fancy Farm political picnic. Marshall, who’s never run for office before, gave as good as she got — better, Democrats said.
The Democrats on the ballot for state House races are:
- First District, Fredrick Fountain, Paducah, challenging Steven Rudy
- Third, Carrie Gottschalk Singler, Paducah, challenging Randy Bridges
- Fifth, Lauren Hines, Murray, challenging Mary Beth Imes
- Sixth, Linda Story Edwards, Benton, challenging Chris Freeland
Unions are among the staunchest supporters of Marshall and the House hopefuls. The Kentucky State AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed all five.
Comer is one of the most anti-union lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He has voted the union position on legislation just 12 percent of the time since he’s been in Washington, according to the AFL-CIO’s Legislative Scorecard. It rates senators and representatives from zero to 100 percent on where they “stand on issues important to working families, including strengthening Social Security and Medicare, freedom to join a union, improving workplace safety and more.”
Comer backed the union position on legislation 10 percent of the time in 2023, when the most recent scorecard was issued.
Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Dustin Reinstedler said labor “looks for Erin Marshall to go places in life, and hopefully we will be right there with her.”
He also said he’d seen Singler at more union events “than I’ve seen just about anybody else. She’s active on social media when it comes to our labor posts. She gets on there and comments and promotes us. She comes to labor events. Those are the kind of candidates that we want to see.”
He noted that Hines is a graduate of Emerge Kentucky, adding that the state AFL-CIO is a major funder and sponsor of the program whose mission is to “increase the number of Democratic women from diverse backgrounds in public office through recruitment, training, and providing a powerful network.”
All of the Republicans consistently vote against organized labor.
In 2017, Rudy was part of the anti-union House GOP supermajority that teamed up with the anti-union Republican Senate supermajority to make Kentucky a “right to work” state, repeal the state prevailing wage law, and pass a bill making it harder for some unions to collect dues. Rudy’s name — and the name of every legislator who voted for the three bills — is on the United Steelworkers District 8 “Wall of Shame” banner, half of which is a “Wall of Fame” with the names of lawmakers who opposed the anti-union measures.
Wall of Shamers include former Graves County Republican Rep. Richard Heath and ex-Calloway County GOP Rep. Kenneth Imes, the current county judge-executive. He is also the husband of Mary Beth Imes, who succeeded him.
Heath lost his Second District seat in the May primary to Kimberly Holloway, who ran to Heath’s right. Nobody signed up for the Democratic primary.
While Smith is optimistic, she’s also realistic. “I’m not sure in terms of western Kentucky because far too many people are going to go in there and vote the straight [Republican] ticket. But I am hoping that statewide we are going to pick up some seats [in the legislature]. I think we are seeing some progress and we need to take whatever positives we can, and we need to build on that.”
She recalled remarks from former congressman Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s current attorney general. “He said Democrats need to be out there living our values 365 days of the year and not just six months before each election cycle. That needs to become more prevalent.”
A footnote: Democratic former State Reps. Gerald Watkins of Paducah and Will Coursey of Marshall County are on the USW “Wall of Fame.”
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