♪ >> Time now for end of week review of some major political stories this week as we go inside Kentucky politics and we have McKenna Horsley who is with the Kentucky Lantern.

She's the State politics reporter there.

And you often see Iran comment.

But we kind of temporal way for a little bit.

She'll be back sometime soon.

She was just on comment last Friday, but it's good to have you on Kentucky Edition McKenna, thanks so much.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So let's talk about a couple of stories that you wrote this week when it comes to some pretty interesting races in the Lexington area.

One in particular, this is kind of suburbia of Lexington House district.

45, as we know, the incumbent fell to defeat in the May primary.

And so now we've got 2 newcomers, I guess you could say.

Tell us about the dynamics of this race.

>> Right.

So this race is the House.

45 district includes parts of Fayette County and Jessamine County.

And as you noted, killing too many who's the Republican incumbent lost his primary earlier this year.

So that leaves that Republican candidate Thomas just said not the president.

Democratic candidate.

Adam, more in this general election, a kind of what we've seen here is this might be a race that's a referendum on culture, war issues, particularly because that was a theme in this prime this Republican primary kind of one of the reasons that too many was some support was for votes against to anti-transgender pieces of legislation in Kentucky and those are things that the Republican candidates now says that he would support Adam or in an interview with me said he's expecting to kind of see some mudslinging in this race that he's prepared for that.

Yes, so we've just got 30 days left.

When are we going to see it?

Right?

And I know that when we talked on election night about this race, Democrats had a lot of hope.

>> That more could overtake this seed in flip it back.

2 Democratic control of the you get that sense.

>> A more does have a lot of Democratic support from the party that we see.

Any Bashir has.

The governor has made an endorsement in this race for more and has also appeared at fundraisers with him.

So there's top Democrats in this race >> and I think >> just in general, we do see a lot of support from Democratic the Democratic Party around suburban districts, both in the Lexington and Louisville metro areas because I think that's where they think they'll make some gains in legislative races in those areas.

Yeah.

And this district for those of us who've been around a long time, this is not the Stanley District right from many years ago when it was redistricted, it kind of made a little bit longer.

And so the dynamics of this district are different in the constituencies are a little different.

>> So let's talk about the constitutional amendment.

Number 2, as we shorthand college amendment number 2, that will also be on the ballot in November here in Kentucky.

This is about what we call school choice with 30 days left to go.

It's really intensifying on both sides of the issue.

The activism talk to us first about Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman, who is a former educator.

She's really putting some skin in the game on this issue.

>> Yeah, I think this is going to be the top issue on election night for Kentucky.

Given that other races like the presidential election, it's probably going to go to President Donald Trump.

So this is going to be the issue to watch.

As you noted, Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman, a former educator, is heavily against this amendment because she believes that it will take money away from public schools that exist and encroach on some of the funding that the legislature put Stuart public education.

She's been going around the state to have press conferences with Democrats in those areas.

Last week she was capital and she kind of kick off this press 4 and she was in northern Kentucky this week.

She'll be in Louisville next week.

So this is really her getting on the road to discuss amendment 2 and that could have as a political advantage for her for her own political future.

If she wanted to mount a gubernatorial campaign in 2027, given that Governor Andy Beshear is term limited, this kind of help her do some campaigning on her own before stat time.

Yeah.

>> And we have to say there's another coal mine that is very active on this issue.

And that's the Republican attorney General Russell Coleman, who was hand slapped a second public school district for their activism on constitutional amendment.

Number 2, tell us more about this.

>> Yeah.

So the second school district in Kentucky to make a post on its official social media accounts advocated against amendment to this week was a guest to independent schools, which is a small school district to kind of the northeastern Kentucky.

It's right outside of the Cincinnati metro area in northern Kentucky area.

They posted this week that they had plans to talk about the Effects.

Amendment 2 would have on the school district twice a week leading up to Election Day.

This led to some drawbacks from criticism or some criticism from Republicans who are supporting the amendment.

2 kind of what we saw last month with Pulaski County schools.

A similar thing happened there at that time.

They G sent out an advisory warning school districts to not use public resources to make political statements or make any kind of stance in a political campaign.

And when I guess this independent schools did it this week, the AG said they cease and desist letter citing that advisory and bringing up that amendment again.

Yeah.

>> And we also learned this week a progressive landing think tank.

We call them the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

Also put out an analysis that talked about how public school teachers in states that have school voucher programs make thousands of dollars less in pay.

Talk to us about this.

And if this could be persuadable to some who are on the fence, maybe about this issue.

>> Yeah.

The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy has put out a lot of analysis and I think it's been difficult for them to target one specific thing because Republicans haven't really said what.

Kind of system they would look for after the amendment passes.

If it does pass a November as for teacher pay, that's something that Jacqueline Coleman did bring up in the press She talked about.

And and and mail where that's going around that saying that the amendment would increase teacher pay if it were to pass.

And she said that that was wrong.

>> A lot to follow between now and November 5th that we should say there's early voting.

And if you haven't registered the last to do so is Monday.

October, the 7th.

So thank you, Mike Hanna, so much for being with us today.

We really appreciate it.

Have a good weekend.

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