While at least three incumbent Republicans did lose their primary races, UK professor Stephen Voss says – apart from one contest – the losses didn’t necessarily make for a tidy storyline.
"If you look at those 3 contests, they really don't fit into a good pattern," he says. "One candidate lost because she was not really an incumbent. She was running in a district that was hardly her old one, another incumbent lost in a battle that out in west Kentucky against someone who had already built name recognition running against him previously and it wasn't really quite the ideological contest that we saw in the third case in central Kentucky."
The ideological contest he's referring to is the race between Nicholasville Republican incumbent Killian Timoney and Liberty candidate Thomas Jefferson. Among the legislative votes that could have swung the district was Timoney's decision not to sign on to a controversial bill placing new restrictions on transgender students and denying transgender minors what advocates refer to as gender-affirming care.
Although it may not have been a red wave for more insurgent candidates, Voss says the fact that some GOP incumbents were picked off could put the fear of a primary into more current officeholders. That, in turn, might lead Republicans to start passing more ideologically-oriented bills with more teeth.
"As the Kentucky Republican Party moves rightward and starts to look more like a southern Republican Party, I would not anticipate that the bills will get watered down as much as they have in the past," Voss says.
If there’s any future openings Democrats might see in the results, Voss says it could come in the form of harder right Republican candidates who have more difficulty attracting independents and moderates. Were that to happen, "Democrats are going to start to see more opportunities in places that the Republicans have a weaker hold over."
For now, Kentucky voters are showing little appetite for evening out the lopsided balance of power in the GOP-led General Assembly.
As in other states, Kentucky’s primary vote also delivered warning signs to the Biden and Trump presidential campaigns.
With the presidential nomination contest ancient history in political terms, all eyes were on how many Kentuckians in the closed primary would cast “uncommitted” or protest votes. Most of the attention landed on Biden’s numbers because he lost nearly 30%. Voss notes that a lot of Biden’s trouble came in deep red counties.
Where the Biden team might be more worried, he explains, is in Kentucky counties that mirror the makeup of those in battleground states.
"The uncommitted vote is still pretty high against him in the sort of suburban and exurban counties that Biden needs. Not here, but in the Midwestern states nearby. Similar counties that he can't afford to lose," Voss notes.
While votes for former Trump rival Nikki Haley – who had yet to say she would vote for the former president – were only around 6%, Voss says, again, the key is to look at the kind of areas Trump needs to win.
"Donald Trump was struggling against Nikki Haley and 'uncommitted' in the sorts of counties that he's going to need in the Midwest, the sorts of places that used to be traditionally more Republican but as the GOP has moved rightward have started to shift a little bit toward the Democrats," he points out.
Overall, the analyst says Kentucky reinforced the same messages to both campaigns about their possible weaknesses come November.
