Wednesday, January 30, 2008

West Kentucky Candidates

There was not to many surprises yesterday regarding those who filed for office. Those filing included:



Congress:

First District

Heather Ryan-D

Ed Whitfield-R(I)

(Ryan is from Paducah and has made the news recently after a confrontation with Mitch McConnell in which Ryan lost her job over.)



Second District

Reid Haire-D

David Boswell-D



Daniel London-R

Brett Guthrie-R

(Ron Lewis surprised everyone by withdrawing from the race.)



Third District

Christ Thieneman-R

Anne Northup-R

John Yarmuth-D(I)

(Thieneman, a developer and a former U of L standout, led the successful fight against the Library Tax Referendum in Louisville this past November. Thieneman could make the race interesting.)



Kentucky House of Representatives

House District 1

Mike Lawrence-D

Steve Rudey-R(I)



House District 6

Will Coursey-D

Marvin Wilson-(R)

(Coursey who has worked for House Speaker Jody Richards will have to battle against Wilson who has given former Rep. J.R. Gray tough opposition in the past.)



House District 15

Brent Yonts-D (I)

Denny Kirtley



Kentucky State Senate

Senate District 1

Carroll Hubbard-D

Rick Johnson-D

Ken Winters-R (I)

(Hubbard will square off against Johnson in the Primary. Johnson who lost last year to Bill Cunningham was hammered in the press for running a media campaign that was less than truthful when it came to the facts regarding Bill Cunningham's record. Cunningham supporters are licking their chops to get even with Johnson who also lost another race in 1998 to Bill Graves.)



Senate District 3

Joey Pendleton-D (I)

Tom Jones-R



House District 9

The Democrat Nominee, Travis Calhoun, will attempt to try to win this seat again. Calhoun lost the primary in 2006 horribly only garnering 34.7% of the vote against Pete MacDonald. MacDonald lost the General Election to Republican Myron Dossett.



District 9 which was held for over 4 decades by Jim Bruce has chosen Calhoun to be his successor. Calhoun faced numerous personal and professional problems which came to light during the Democrat Primary. Calhoun who is a medical doctor, apparently got into some type of trouble and lost his privileges to dispense prescriptions for a period of time. Some have argued that there was much more to the story but due to Calhoun's political influence he was able to keep his license and minimize the punishment he received.



Rumor has it that House Speaker Jody Richards was not all that knocked out with Calhoun's candidacy but House Caucus Director Jonathan Hurst apparently has assured the Speaker and the Caucus that he can win the seat for the Democrats.



The 9th District which is considered one of the most Conservative Districts in Kentucky is pretty unique to the political map. The 9th which has been gerrymandered so many times, is the smallest House District in Kentucky. There are only 15,696 voters. The next smallest District is the 37th with 19,436. District 9 has 9,102 Democrats, 5,122 Republicans and 1,472 Other. The District encompasses South Christian and North Christian County with only a few precincts in the City of Hopkinsville.

I guess I am not as optimistic as Jonathan Hurst is about the Democrats chances of winning this seat. I guess we will all know in November.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tim,

When talking about Rick Johnson, why don't you ever bring up the Hopgood race? Rick beat him pretty bad - including getting almost 80 percent in Graves and Calloway County.

Rick has been getting almost 70 percent of the vote in Graves County for the last 10 years. I can't see people in Graves abandoning someone who has lived in Symsonia for someone who has been living in Paducah and Montgomery, Alabama and hasn't won an election in 20 years.

PS>.. You might ask Bill Cunningham who he is voting for.