Time now for our end of week review of some major political developments in Kentucky and elsewhere.

And we've got our favorite pair of pundits with us, the former Kentucky secretaries of state.

One is a birthday boy, Trey Grayson, and the other Bob Babidge.

Happy sunny day to this week.

And so let's talk about I told you I was going to ask you one major question.

The most significant piece of legislation that passed other than budget related bills.

Trey, birthday boy, what do you think?

I'm going to say the omnibus bill.

It had a tortured.

Passage, the maternal health.

The maternal health bill.

You know something?

We it was a situation where the Republicans Democrats came together, led by the women in the legislature.

Tim Mosher was the lead sponsor, but she worked with Republicans and Democrats, navigated it through the House and the Senate.

They died briefly.

Then it came back.

And I just think it's going to make a big difference for the maternal health of women.

And it's just nice to see folks come across party lines to solve something like that or try to solve something like that.

And that came in underneath the buzzer, right, as as fact.

Yes.

Okay.

But what's good with omnibus, I'm not going to change my mind just because my intern took my.

I should ask you first.

Right.

That's okay.

The monies, Bill, is significant because it advances health in a great way.

The legislature also in that last day, fully funded public health transformation, another health commitment all over the state, the omnibus bill giving care to mothers as they go through those first months before the baby's born.

I think we're the sixth state to do that in Medicaid.

It's a very significant move.

Kim Mosher is an extraordinary member of the House and led it.

But it did get twisted around as things happen.

We could spend probably 30 minutes analyzing all the ins and outs of that piece of legislation.

But it's it's a landmark for the state and a very good step.

Anything else?

So no comment about the SAFER Kentucky Act that you don't see.

That is a sterling piece of legislation.

Yes, for one.

I did.

But I have the right to reserve to change my mind.

Right.

Well, look, the Republicans politically think that's a real big winner and started talking about it in the fall during a during the gubernatorial campaign, worked it through, were you know, you knew it was going to face a veto override or gleefully overrode it to have their own signing ceremony.

If we could just add on, you don't know what it costs.

And for a lot of sectors of our state commitments, higher education, health, other matters of importance on most any bill, you have a fiscal load and you have to pin the price on this one.

We don't know exactly what it will cost.

It's going to be very expensive over the course of the next 5 to 10 years because we're going to put more people in prison for sure, and that's an expense that we have to account for.

And not every year is going to be as big as this year in terms of new money coming in.

And the decision tree is five or ten years from now will be different as you account for fighting crime and making that commitment and then having to pay the price as we go along.

The question that you ask specifically one of fiscal two, probably because, you know, they didn't want to have that number out there, right?

Well, because the estimates are as high as $1 billion.

Right.

Right.

But when you Westerfield early on and he was doing extensive analysis, he had it from different sources at 60 million a year.

And then he revised that as we went along.

It is expensive.

I've just learned from Trey something I should remember that calculating a fiscal no beyond the money to the impact is important because a lot of people say this is a Louisville focused bill.

And it was a loophole bomb for sure, along with Bratcher and others in the.

If you if you think about that and the importance of having our star economy, our biggest economy will be safe and strong.

There is an argument for the bill being directed to Louisville.

However, it applies statewide.

That's where we're going to have costs everywhere.

We're going to have more folks locked up in communities that already have more people locked up than they can take care of.

Now we shift to the campaign trail, and Senate Majority Leader Damien Thayer was in this studio sitting right where you sat and said that he's going to be on the trail for a normal Republicans.

And I pressed him on what that means.

Give me some names, give me some policies.

And of course, he dodged that pretty eloquently.

But what does he mean?

Well, I'll give you I think maybe the easiest way to explain it is, look, we identify a couple primary races where there are some incumbents are being challenged from other factions of the party.

The first the way to think about the Republican Party is there's generally three factions.

There's not a perfect division.

But, you know, you've got your name and use the term normal.

So I'm going to defer to that majority Leader and say get your normal Republicans, which are more economic chamber, the Chamber of Commerce types.

You have ones that are more socially conservative.

Now, that's kind of that's usually something that's president all three factions, but they lead with their social conservatism.

So like a Josh Callaway pass if you get me.

You know we have several pastors.

They lead with their social issues.

And the third are the kind of the libertarian or liberty infused candidates cinematics, Steve Doe and a few others.

Again, nobody.

They don't really fit perfectly into three categories, but that's where they are.

And so what Damon wants to do is focus on the ones who are more willing to advance economic development kinds of policies, you know, more willing to maybe let not let perfect be the enemy of the good.

That's something during the tributes.

Like that phrase was used quite a bit and that's something he cares a lot about.

So a couple of races, you know, one would be out in western Kentucky, Senator Jason Howe, who ran the first time with no opposition, nobody filed in the primary or the general.

He's running against former state rep Len Beckler.

Beckler is from a county that was just added to the district.

He lost through a redistricting incumbent on incumbent race because, you know, running to the right of Howell and saying how is not conservative enough?

How is more of the I think there would describe how is a normal Republican that's an example of one you know here in Lexington Killian Tammany has an opponent is Thomas Jefferson John Adams George Washington.

Thomas Jefferson.

Right right.

Yeah.

I mean, Timothy would fall to this category probably as well.

Up in Maya, in northern Kentucky, we referenced Kim Mosher earlier.

She's being challenged from the right and she's one of the most prolific and productive legislators you have in northern Kentucky.

So those are some of the people that there's probably referring to when he uses that term.

And this is how politics works, right?

The primaries are driving your primaries, decide who wins.

And in Louisville, it's the Democratic primary in a lot of cases in in rural Kentucky, northern Kentucky suburbs, that's the Republican primary.

And so there's more willingness now, I think, among Republicans to get involved in the primaries because they know that's where it's at.

Right.

But it's unusual.

Right.

Of course, he is outgoing legislator, so he probably has more freedom than those who are currently trying to keep their seats.

He does.

He's going to keep a strong identity.

You can be sure of that, because he's just a strong leader.

The headline that appeared, I think a law said that the legislature managed not to do some of them call them fringe issues or controversial issues, and that the leadership managed to control the outcome toward those fundamentals that everybody cares about.

Republican-Democrat all across the spectrum, the development, Delta, Covington, the several hundred million to Louisville, the horse park in central Kentucky, aviation commitments that we haven't seen before, commitments to our ports that move a lot of Kentucky product around the world.

Those kinds of things matter.

Those are largely budgetary.

But to keep the focus on growing the state, making the state attractive, bringing younger people home to to thrive here, giving them that chance.

That's what leadership seem to be focused on this time compared to a year ago when things were a little tough at times.

Right.

Right.

Keep the focus on what a majority of all Kentuckians want in terms of growing a state that's attractive, a place that has promise and an economy that is booming, even.

Hopeful is having the budget gives you the ability to impose that discipline.

And also next year, perhaps we might see drag queen type legislation and A.D. legislation come to the fore quicker and be talked about even more robustly than it was.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, leaders I'm sure I didn't you know, you had a chance to watch it.

Yeah.

But, you know, they're they're ecstatic with how the session went.

They are really proud of this budget.

They, they think it's disciplined, didn't add a lot of recurring expenses so they can put a tax cut in and also continue to create a surplus so that you can do these strategic investments.

And so that's this whole economic theory that Republicans have had over the last few years.

And so I'm really excited as a as a fiscal conservatism, normal Republican.

This is my kind of budget.

And I really appreciate what leadership with Chris McDaniel and Jason Petri did to try to keep that focus on economic development and paid dividends, pardon the pun, in the future.

Thank you all.

Thanks.