Commentary: Election will test how far Trump has fallen in Kentucky

This column was first published in the Northern Kentucky Tribune. 

Kentuckians are heading to the polls (no-excuse early voting was Oct. 29-31) to elect a U.S. senator, six members of the U.S. House, half the state Senate, the entire state House, many judges and local officials – and decide whether Kentucky governors should be barred from issuing pardons in the last 60 days of their terms.

That last bit on the ballot is a reminder of the state’s most unpopular governor in living memory, Republican Matt Bevin, who went wild with pardons after Andy Beshear defeated him in 2019. Bevin has played a cameo role in this election, as the supposed doppelganger of his last running mate, Ralph Alvarado, who’s running against Democrat Zach Dembo for the 6th District congressional seat being vacated by Andy Barr, the GOP nominee for the Senate seat of the retiring Mitch McConnell.

In his book, Beshear casts Bevin as “Trump lite,” aiming  his all-but-announced presidential campaign at the unpopular president. Donald Trump is not on midterm ballots but will have more influence on the national results than any other person, because he is so unpopular – even in Kentucky, which he won by an average of 30 points. Every fuel-price sign is an anti-Trump sign.

Alvarado has fled from Trump, most recently by saying the Iran War needs to end “right now” and running a TV ad saying politicians of both parties have ruined the American Dream attained by his immigrant parents. Dembo has a spot in which he says “I know you’re angry. I am, too,” and Democrats seem angrier and thus likelier to vote. 

That’s one reason the Cook Political Report sees the odds moving Dembo’s way, but a Trump-connected political action committee that’s been attacking Dembo and promoting Alvarado made a huge buy Monday for the final week, reflecting Cook’s call that the race is a tossup. It will be an early signal on election night of the size of the blue wave Democrats expect.

The Senate race has not been competitive, because 2022 Democratic nominee Charles Booker didn’t air a TV commercial until this week. However, Booker was already on paid TV, because a committee tied to Barr has been running spots attacking him in some TV markets. Barr thus follows the McConnell maxim of taking nothing for granted, and may figure that an ad with closeups of an African American man taking liberal positions as he answers questions and stares into the camera will scare some Republicans to the polls – especially in Barr’s home 6th District, which he would hate to see go Democratic.

If Booker had the sort of money Barr has, he could air one of the year’s more entertaining ads, a 60-second, A.I.-generated video that shows Barr and the senator at “McConnell’s” restaurant, a la McDonald’s, selling corporate tax breaks, corruption, Medicare and Medicaid cuts, and “lackey pie – that comes with a Barr wind-up toy that does whatever Trump tells him to do, even support a war and higher gas prices.” Barr’s most recent commercials have touted his work for constituents.

That is also the theme of the latest ad from 1st District Rep. James Comer, who’s likely thinking more about running for governor in 2027 than he is about defeating poorly funded Democrat John “Drew” Williams. Comer’s oddly drawn district and fat campaign fund allow him to legitimately run ads in the Louisville and Lexington TV markets and broaden his name recognition and favorability for next year – a legal semi-circumvention of the state law against using federal campaign money in state races.

Speaking of state and federal matters, the Trump law firm formerly known as our Department of Justice said Oct. 21 that its Civil Rights Division would send election monitors to Jefferson and Fayette counties, Kentucky’s only Democratic strongholds. Their attention might be better directed to a few counties in Comer’s district and several in southeastern Kentucky’s 5th District, where election chicanery lingers.

The 5th has been represented since 1981 by Republican Harold “Hal” Rogers, whose 89th birthday is Dec. 31 – a fact referenced by Democratic opponent Ned Pillersdorf, who said on KET Monday night that he is running because “no congressional district in the country will be hurt more by this big ugly bill,” the Trump-dubbed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that will cut Medicaid and other programs after the election. Rogers has made no joint appearances with Pillersdorf, 70.

Pillersdorf has run an ad in which former Gov. Paul Patton (who turned 89 on May 26 and says he’s “too old for Congress”) reveals that he has voted for Rogers but the congressman “sold us out to the Washington elite.” Rogers is unlikely to lose, given his decades of delivering for the district, but the voting there will be one measure of how far into the ditch Trump has driven the party he hijacked and transformed.