Kentucky Democrats glimpse a glimmer of an opening to regain rural voters’ trust
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
Despite decades of setbacks — most recently the defection of a longtime lawmaker — Kentucky Democrats, gathering this weekend in Owensboro for their annual convention, see a chance to reclaim some rural voters thanks to Republican actions under President Donald Trump.
“I mean, for all its imperfections, the Democratic Party, in my opinion, is the best path that we have right now to stand up for working people and defend health care and push back against the forces trying to erode basic truth and fairness in government,” said McClain Dyer, vice chair of the Carter County Democratic Party.
Dyer’s state senator, Robin Webb of Grayson, recently became the latest in a long line of Appalachian politicians switching from Democrat to Republican. The change also makes her part of the GOP supermajority that controls the Kentucky legislature.
“I represent my district,” Webb told the Lantern in an interview. “I’ve always been pretty party blind, but I try to represent the will of my district, and I’m going to continue to do that. Party affiliation is not going to affect the way I represent my people. I’m going to represent everybody.”
Webb, an attorney and former coal miner, said Democratic Party positions on coal, guns and allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports had alienated voters in her Northeastern Kentucky district, which includes Boyd, Carter, Greenup and Lewis counties.
Republican Trump not only won all but Kentucky’s two largest counties for the second time in November 2024, he also expanded his margins of victory in the state’s rural areas.
Still, Prestonsburg attorney Ned Pillersdorf says Republican plans, endorsed by Trump, to slash the social safety net provide Democrats with an opening.
Pillersdorf is so optimistic about Democrats’ chances in next year’s mid-term elections that he is considering challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of Somerset, who has held Kentucky’s 5th Congressional District seat for 44 years, often running unopposed or with a token Democratic opponent.
Pillersdorf told the Lantern he’s likely to announce a run for Rogers’ seat on July 4.
Rogers’ district is one of the nation’s poorest and one of the most dependent on Medicaid. Almost half of Rogers’ constituents — 44% — rely on the state-federal program to pay for their health care and it has been critical to sustaining hospital services in Eastern Kentucky.
Rogers voted in favor of the Trump-endorsed spending and tax plan that would make the largest cuts to Medicaid in its history. The bill is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by $793 billion and reduce spending to help people afford health insurance by $268 billion over a decade.
‘None of the above’ gains steam in Bluegrass State
In the competition for new Kentucky voters, both major political parties are trailing “other.”
Secretary of State Michael Adams recently announced that Kentuckians registering to vote under “other” political affiliations have outnumbered Republican and Democratic registrations combined for three straight months.
“As the Democrats move further left and the Republicans move further right, more voters are registering as Independent,” said Adams. “Kentucky has a large and growing political center; candidates should take note and court this growing bloc of voters.”
Despite “other’s” progress, the major parties still claim the most voters by far. Kentucky has almost 1.6 million registered Republicans — 47% of the electorate. Registered Democrats number almost 1.4 million or 42%.
Kentucky has registered 361,168 voters under other political affiliations, making up 11% of the electorate, according to Adams’ office.
Rogers defended his support for the bill, saying, “I did not take this vote lightly.” He said the bill would protect Medicaid for poor Eastern Kentuckians by removing illegal immigrants and ineligible recipients from the rolls.
Pillersdorf said Eastern Kentuckians also are worried about funding for local programs. Letcher County Schools planned to use its remaining $3 million in pandemic relief funding to replace 25 school buses lost during 2022 floods, but Trump’s U.S. Department of Education nixed the reimbursement. The Trump administration canceled a grant to the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County that was to support reading and math intervention programs.
Pillersdorf said Democrats have long had a problem of appearing like the “coastal elite party,” as national leaders are often from New York or California, but he said growing concern about cuts to “social safety net” programs is a chance to “regain the confidence of rural voters.”
“I think if those issues are front and center, the Democrats are going to regain ground quickly,” he said.
Pillersdorf is married to former state Supreme Court Justice Janet Stumbo and helped run her nonpartisan campaigns. He also has prominently championed the clients of convicted fraudster Eric Conn after the Social Security Administration tried to end their disability benefits.
State v. national party brand
Michael Adams, Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state, said Kentucky Democrats share a problem with Vermont Republicans — their party’s national brand. Democratic presidential candidates typically win Vermont, a reliably blue state, but Republican Gov. Phil Scott has won five elections. In Kentucky, it’s been 28 years since a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state, but Democrats have held the governorship for all but eight of those 28 years.
For most of modern Kentucky history, Democrats controlled Frankfort, but now they hold a superminority in both the state House and Senate. Nearly all of them are elected from Louisville and Lexington, the state’s largest cities.
In July 2022, registered Republican voters outnumbered Democrats for the first time in Kentucky
Adams said that Democrats as a whole have “been moving away from the New Deal coalition of farmers, working class laborers” and toward a professional class. Meanwhile, Republicans have made gains with voters in those traditionally Democratic categories.
“The two parties are trading voters, basically trading parts of their coalition to each other, and so that’s really outside the Kentucky Democratic Party’s power to do anything about. That’s not their fault,” Adams said. “The question is, how do they respond to that? And how can they separate their state brand from the national brand?”
Pillersdorf said party leaders have had discussions about spending money on elections in what are perceived as “unwinnable districts” for Democrats — including Kentucky’s 5th Congressional District.
“I agree with the old Howard Dean approach,” he said, referring to the strategy of the former Democratic National Committee chair and Vermont governor. “We need to compete everywhere. We should not concede an inch of ground.”
To that end, Kentucky Democratic Party leaders have been traveling the state in recent months, trying to engage voters in what they call a rural listening tour.
Webb, the state senator, said the effort is “about 20 years too late.”
“For those of us who have been the rural voice and been minimized and marginalized and excluded and not listened to, it’s too little, too late to acknowledge rural voters,” she said.
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