GENERAL ELECTION RECAP

OUTSIDE OF JEFFERSON COUNTY – Very Solid

SUMMARY: NO SLIP-UPs. Liberty candidates won every race they could reasonably have been expected to, and converted all of their major primary successes into the expected results (elected seats at the table).
• Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, along with the entire KY Republican Federal Congressional delegation, won rather easily.
• All uncontested incumbents, of which there were many, won re-elections.
• All contested incumbents (Walker Thomas, Felicia Rabourn, Savannah Maddox, Matt Lockett, William Lawrence, Ryan Dotson, David Hale, Shane Baker & Bill Wesley) won their re-elections convincingly.
• Steve Rawlings, Marianne Proctor (uncontested), Steve Doan, and Candy Massaroni (uncontested), who all took out prominent establishment republicans in the primary (Chad McCoy withdrew late) won their elections and are now Representatives-elect.
• Rebecca Raymer claimed an open KY house seat.
• Robby Mills and Gex Williams both won their KY Senate races.

Kim Holloway, who has never held office, managed 20%+ of the vote AS A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE against a House Committee Chair (very impressive). Jerry Gearding lost to a long-time Democrat incumbent who was heavily favored.

INSIDE JEFFERSON COUNTY – HUGE Night

SUMMARY: AS GOOD AS COULD POSSIBLY BE EXPECTED. Liberty, or Liberty-adjacent, candidates took out 2 long-time democrat house incumbents, claimed an open house seat, and took out 2 incumbent democrat metro council members… to add to the senate and house seats that were claimed unopposed.
• Lindsey Tichenor beat a write-in candidate to become senator-elect for an open seat.
• John Hodgson was unopposed, filling Jerry Miller’s seat to become representative-elect.
• Emily Callaway took out long-term Democrat incumbent, Jeff Donohue.
• 2 Candidates who were specifically vetted as strong conservatives, if not perhaps Liberty Candidates, won house seats: Jared Bauman took out VERY long-term incumbent Charles Miller, and Susan Witten claimed an open house seat in a tight election.
• Both vetted Liberty Candidates for the Metro Council, Dan Seum Jr and Khalil “Charlie” Batshon, won their elections (the only 2 republicans to do so).

Carrie Sanders-McKeehan lost her bid as a major underdog in a very heavily democrat district against a long-time Dem incumbent.

NON-PARTISAN RACES

Over half of the Judges we vetted as being excellent candidates won:
Bisig, Eckerle, Karem, Bellows, Clay, Jones, Garvey, McDonald, Nicholson. A few others were near misses: Holman, Stone, Shaw and Gilbert all got at least 46% of the vote.

All of the Jefferson School Board candidates lost, though Steve Ullum and Misty Glin only narrowly. The JCTA PAC “Better Schools Kentucky” put well over $700K into these 4 race, so that performance was actually remarkably competitive. All 3 Anchorage independent candidates won. 2 of the 3 Oldham County school board candidates we vetted took out the incumbent: Dennis and Clem. 2 of the 4 Floyd County, IN school board candidates took out incumbents: Neafus and Baugh. More results pending.

Although the vote hasn’t entirely been counted, it appears at this time that both Constitutional Amendments failed by under 5% of the vote. At the very least, and we will have to dig into the post-analysis on voter sentiment on why people voted one way or the other, this should be an indicator that amendments should be (1) short and readable, (2) deal with exactly one issue, and (3) re-worded to be clear affirmative statements (not containing ‘no’, ‘nothing’, etc. when the intent is to vote ‘yes’).