Despite massive fundraising disadvantages, Democratic candidates for the Kentucky legislature flipped nine seats from Republicans incumbents in the election Tuesday, while only losing one seat.
Democrats made the largest inroads in suburban Louisville districts where they had lost ground in recent years, knocking off seven GOP incumbents with at least part of their district including Jefferson County.
The biggest shocks of the night: state Rep. Jason Nemes, the House majority whip, lost the race by roughly 500 votes, and state Sen. Julie Raque Adams lost by a wider margin, despite an enormous spending advantage over her opponent.
Other Republican incumbents representing at least part of Louisville to lose to Democratic challengers were Reps. Jared Bauman — the lead sponsor of the Safer Kentucky Act, major anti-crime bill — Chris Lewis, Susan Witten and Ken Fleming, as well as state Sen. Lindsey Tichenor.
Democrats also flipped two Republican seats in suburban Lexington and northern Kentucky. Democrat Aaron Currin defeated GOP Rep. Stephanie Dietz of Edgewood by six percentage points, while Ryan Staford beat Republican Rep. Matt Lockett of Nicholasville by just 200 votes.
While Democrats did lose their last remaining seat in their former stronghold of eastern Kentucky, they held onto seats that in previous years had been extremely close. Rep. Matthew Lehman of Newport won by almost 20 points after winning by just 30 votes in 2024, and Rep. Adam Moore of Lexington beat former GOP Rep. Killian Timoney by 9 points after winning by a fraction of a percent two years ago.
The dramatic Democratic shift came amid a “blue wave” spreading across the country Tuesday, as Democrats appear likely to take back the majority of the U.S. House and Senate. Part of that wave came in central Kentucky, where Democrat Zach Dembo flipped the Sixth Congressional District to the party for the first time since 2012.
Democrats’ success in Kentucky General Assembly races was in spite of a staggering disadvantage they had in campaign spending, as Republican candidates were backed by nearly $2 million of ad spending by conservative political action committees.
This was especially the case in Louisville races, as Adams, Fleming, Nemes and Witten were the beneficiaries of $1.2 million of independent PAC ad spending, while their campaigns reported spending at least $1.2 million in the general election with two more weeks left until Election Day. Their four Democratic opponents reported spending less than $250,000.
Adams, formerly a member of Senate GOP leadership, was defeated by former Jefferson County Board of Education member Sarah Cole McIntosh, who finished with nearly 2,000 more votes. McIntosh won in spite of $1.2 million of spending in support of Adams during the general election, with McIntosh spending less than $10,000 as of two weeks ago.
Nemes fell roughly 500 votes short of Democrat Jennifer Hardin, a small business owner.
Despite nearly $600,000 of PAC ad and campaign spending in support of Witten, she lost to Democrat Tim Hall, a longtime Jeffersontown city councilman, by 14 percentage points. Fleming was also supported by more than half a million dollars of general election spending, but lost to Democrat Suhas Kulkarni by four percentage points.
Bauman lost to Democrat Almaria Baker by seven percentage points in his south Louisville district, while Lewis lost his southwest Jefferson district to Democrat Cassie Blausey by nearly 1,000 votes.
Democrat Christian Furman, a physician and University of Louisville professor, won by less than two percentage points over Tichenor, who has advocated for legislation targeting transgender Kentuckians.
Even in several races where Republicans held onto their seats, it was sometimes by unusually tight margins. GOP Sen. Gex Williams of Verona held onto his northern Kentucky district by just over 600 votes against Democrat Stella Pollard. Republican Sen. Jared Carpenter of Berea and Rep. Daniel Fister of Versailles kept their seats by just two percentage points.
Rep. John Hodgson of Fisherville barely clung to his Jefferson County district by 100 votes against Democrat Woody Zorn.
Republicans will now have a 74-26 supermajority in the Kentucky House when the 2027 session convenes in January, and a 30-8 advantage in the Senate.
(This story first ran on WKMS, the public radio station at Murray State University.)
Joe Sonka is Kentucky Public Radio’s first enterprise statehouse reporter. He joined the team in October 2023.
Joe has covered Kentucky government and politics for nearly two decades. He grew up in Lexington and moved to Louisville in 2011, covering city and state government at LEO Weekly and then Insider Louisville. He became state government reporter for the Courier Journal in 2019 and was a lead reporter for the newspaper's 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning series on former Gov. Matt Bevin's controversial pardons just before leaving office.
You can email Joe at jsonka@lpm.org and find him at non-Twitter apps such as Threads (@joesonkaky) and BlueSky (@joesonka.bsky.social).
Sylvia Goodman is Kentucky Public Radio's Capitol reporter. Email her at sgoodman@lpm.org.
