Going into next year’s legislative session, Kentucky Republicans will still hold a commanding majority in the General Assembly. But for the first time in years, voters pushed back against established incumbents and elected nine Democrats to serve in the state House and Senate.
For Republicans in the House, it’s the first net losses since 2018 and in the Senate, their first since 2006. Concentrated in suburban areas, House Republicans lost a member of majority leadership in Rep. Jason Nemes of Middletown and Sen. Julie Raque Adams, who lost her Louisville district and has been in one of the chambers of the legislature since 2011.
The GOP elected officials who spoke to Kentucky Public Radio said they believe they had little control over how voters cast their ballot this election. They say voters were driven by frustration with national policies — not their own.
“Whoever was running at whatever level you were running, you were being judged on national and international dynamics, not things that were here,” said Senate President Robert Stivers of Manchester.
Democratic leaders say they put up the better candidates and ran on issues that matter to Kentuckians, like affordability. Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Morgan Eaves said many people were “fed up.”
“Democrats did a great job of highlighting exactly what Republicans have been doing and how none of it has been helping the average everyday Kentucky family, particularly in Louisville,” Eaves said.
Adams and Nemes did not respond to calls or texts. Rep. Ken Fleming, a Louisville Republican who lost this year to Suhas Kulkarni, told KPR he “sensed something was amiss” in his district, but that he is proud of his record.
Over the last year, Fleming has focused heavily on Medicaid spending as chair of the Medicaid Oversight and Advisory Committee. He also sponsored House Bill 2, which enshrined federal work requirements into state law, added new co-pays for certain Medicaid services and more.
“Political headwinds obscure people's objectivity for whatever reason. And if you peel things back and look at exactly what we've accomplished, it's significant,” Fleming said, pointing to a lower income tax rate and the state’s larger rainy-day savings account.
Fleming said he’s felt the national headwinds before. He was elected first in 2016 with Trump’s first red wave that gave Republicans control of the state House and he lost two years later — a defeat he attributed to frustration over former GOP Gov. Matt Bevin.
When asked if they believed the results of the election should have an effect on Republican policy in the state, GOP leaders of both chambers said they are staying the course.
“In a night that Republicans lost nationally by historic numbers,” Stivers said. “We maintained 80% of our chamber, and I think that tells you how strong the Senate Republicans are in controlling their own destiny and still going to set the policy for this state.”
Stivers also noted that losses were concentrated in the state’s urban and suburban areas, and rural voters still voted reliably red. At the same time as Democrats made ground near the state’s urban areas, they also lost their last seat in eastern Kentucky.
House Speaker David Osborne of Prospect said in a statement he’s taking the results “seriously,” but referred back to the national swing against Republicans.
“As we look ahead, we still have a 74-member supermajority focused on making good policy on the issues that matter most to Kentucky families: lowering costs, creating good-paying jobs, strengthening schools, and making our communities safer,” Osborne said. “We will continue working to deliver results on these priorities for Kentuckians across the state.”
Soul searching within the GOP
It’s a moment where the national GOP is asking big questions about the future of the party. K.C. Crosbie, a former Lexington city councilwoman and now co-chair of the Republican National Committee, called for a nationwide accounting of how they lost voters this midterm as she announced she’d be running for chair of the RNC in January.
“Tuesday’s results were a serious setback. Democrats will control both chambers of Congress, and we lost races in places we have long counted on,” Crosbie wrote in a letter to RNC members. “We owe ourselves an honest account of why.”
Rep. Savannah Maddox, a Republican from Dry Ridge and member of the liberty-wing of the state Republican party, said the results were a “wide-scale rejection” of the federal government’s policies.
“When it was politically expedient to do so, the GOP political establishment had absolutely no problem harnessing the power of Trump with voters to help them win elections, whereas when it's been a matter of principle and ideology, it's been a lot more difficult of a path to take,” Maddox said.
Congressman Thomas Massie, who lost his primary race against Trump-endorsed challenger and Congressman-elect Ed Gallrein, said he expects a massive shift in Washington, D.C. and that state legislators got caught in that shake-up.
“Yesterday was a singularity, kind of like the universe collapsing on itself. Different solar systems will form in the wake of it,” Massie said the day after the election. “We're in the primordial ooze … where the universe is going to start forming, and it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks to see what happens in Congress.”
Impacts for Louisville
The effects of Election Day on the General Assembly were most profound in Jefferson County, where seven GOP incumbents who represented at least part of the county lost their elections. Stivers said the effect on the state’s largest city could be profound the next time budget negotiations roll around.
“It's going to be the Senate controlled by the Republicans, and the House, controlled by the Republicans, that are going to make the budgetary decisions, and the two biggest advocates for Louisville just lost.”
Kentucky Public Radio's Joe Sonka contributed to this report.
