Cautiously optimistic.

I feel excited.

And what happens in the next couple hours will determine the future for Kentucky for decades.

We should know tonight who moves on.

And the Kentucky governor's race having a mental health professional respond when someone is struggling with a mental health crisis.

Makes more sense than a police response when someone can't find the help they need to deal with a mental health crisis.

Now the help can find them.

Sometimes as a foster parent, we would go to bed at night as a family of six and we would wake up the next morning with the middle of the night phone call and we could wake up with a family of eight.

And we'll tell you about the effort to make Kentucky a more foster friendly state.

Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

The Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs and the KET Millennium Fund.

Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition on this Tuesday, May 16th.

It is primary Election Day in Kentucky.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you for winding down your Tuesday with us.

It's finally here, the 2023 Kentucky primary polls closed 30 minutes ago and the Eastern time zone of Kentucky, they closed 30 minutes from now in the Central Time Zone.

Kentuckians are picking Republican and Democratic nominees for governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, state auditor and commissioner of agriculture.

There's also a special election in the 28th State Senate District to replace former state Senator Ralph Alvarado.

And there are wet, dry votes in Madison and Allen counties.

The Kentucky secretary of state's office, though, predicted voter turnout as low as 10% today based on absentee ballot requests.

We'll also see if weather affects that number.

Daniel Cameron, Kentucky's attorney general, appears to be the front runner among the Republican candidates for governor, according to recent public polls.

We caught up with Cameron as he voted this morning in Louisville.

How are you feeling going into this election?

We feel good.

Obviously cautiously optimistic.

The voters will decide who's going to be the Republican nominee for governor.

And we hope that it will be.

It would be me.

You've been heavily outspent.

Does that weigh on you at all?

No, ma'am.

We feel very strongly about the vision that we've set forth and the ability to articulate that message and get to as many places and communities on.

Cameron says polls show different things, and in the end, it's about who shows up and votes at the polls there.

Kellie Kraft, former ambassador to the United Nations, voted in Lexington.

I am just so excited.

We are.

We've been traveling across the state from table to table.

We finished our 138 kitchen table stuff yesterday, last night, actually, in my hometown of Glasgow, where it all started with my mom and dad, my brother, my sister.

And what happens in the next couple hours will determine the future for Kentucky for decades.

I am very excited to take this this state and to defeat Andy Beshear and to have a revived law in Frankfort.

Some of Kraft's supporters met her outside the polling place.

Craft also told us she'd received an uplifting and supportive text message from previous gubernatorial candidate and state representative Savannah Maddox.

Sitting AG Commissioner Ryan Corales and Republican gubernatorial hopeful voted today in Scott County, where his family has lived and farmed for over 200 years.

I feel excited.

Today is the result of over a year's worth of work crisscrossing Kentucky, visiting all 120 counties.

I'm not concerned at all.

The only poll that I care about is what's going to happen today on Election Day.

Farmers work out in the field today.

It's nice and soggy.

So I think my farm base is going to show up today.

I've actually been jokingly referencing wanting rain on Election Day for over a year now and God provides.

Hmm.

When asked about what his first order of business would be if elected governor, Carol said that he would, quote, restore law and order and public safety in Kentucky and in both urban and rural areas.

Tonight, the results of Kentucky's primary contests are widely considered an early bellwether in the 2024 presidential race.

The commonwealth will finally found out.

Find out who will be the Republican nominee for governor to take on likely Democratic nominee Andy Beshear.

It's been a wild campaign season and our Kacey Parker Bal has been there along the way and he takes a look back at this race.

I'm running for governor.

Those were the words spoken by 12 different people in the Republican Party.

Today, Kentucky Republicans will decide which one will represent them in November.

Kelly again, has spent $10 million attacking me.

When I'm the nominee, I just hope she'll be willing to part with some more of that money.

To many, the race played out on television with ads that appeared to be from a parachuting liberal alternate universe children's teacher.

You know, my shenanigans and ads that tried to set up a race in November when Biden and Beshear step over the line and violate the Constitution.

I fight back and win.

And ads that tried to stay out of the phrase and not even traveling across the commonwealth to ask for your vote.

That's not me.

The top three has stayed the same throughout public polling.

And a new poll released Sunday shows the same three, but with a wider gap.

The Emerson College Fox 56 poll shows Attorney General Daniel Cameron with a 15 point lead over former U.N.

Ambassador Kelly Craft.

Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Corales remains in third with more than 12% of voters still undecided.

Time to elect somebody who grew up like one of you did Morgan.

The candidates have tried to grab the attention of those undecided voters in the campaign's final days.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz stumped for Kelly Craft, and she, like the other candidates, spent yesterday, making final appeals to get out the vote.

What happens in the next 36 hours will determine the future for Kentucky for the next few decades.

As attorney General Daniel Cameron continued to play his message that he is the best candidate to beat incumbent Governor Andy Beshear.

I'm hopeful that the folks here and across Kentucky will get themselves to the polls, but will also urge their friends and family members to get to the polls as well to support this campaign.

But the Republican primary for governor also became known for what candidates didn't do.

Empty chairs at debates left space for other candidates to make noise.

The whole state of Kentucky is filled with a bureaucratic mess.

And I'm going to go in there and I'm on a tear it all apart and fix it.

And I've got the most experience.

13 years in the house, seven plus years as auditor.

And then in May, when our entire hospitality industry was still shuttered, you couldn't go to a restaurant, you couldn't go to a bar, you couldn't go to a hotel.

And these people are saying, we're never going to reopen.

We stood up and did something.

But those opportunity is didn't move them much in public polls.

That same Emerson College poll shows former attorney Eric Dieters might have an opportunity to be the fourth candidate with over 10% of the vote.

The only other candidates polling above 2% are state auditor Mike Harmon and Somerset Mayor Alan Cook.

Only once did the top two candidates appear on stage together, and that was on Tees, Kentucky.

Tonight, as I understand, you have a coordination issue with your husband, Joe Craft, and that's under investigation right now.

But back to the real point, which is that we are going to leave my husband out of it.

We'll see if the latest public poll and beliefs by pundits hold true tonight after the polls close as this compelling primary season comes to an end for Kentucky edition.

I'm K.C.

Parker Bill.

Thank you, Casey.

So let's drill down a little bit more to that poll from Emerson College and why TV in Lexington that shows Cameron expanding his lead over Carly Craft.

That poll showed Cameron at 33% with Kraft around 18%.

As you see on your screen.

Ryan calls was down a little around 13%, about 13%, as you see there, also were undecided.

And that's a big difference from 20% a few weeks ago.

The poll also showed Eric dieters at around 10%, a little under with 9.7, with Mike Harmon at 4.4%.

Now, on Kentucky tonight last night, Republican consultant Trey Watson was skeptical about the polls findings.

You know, I was pretty harsh on this poll on Twitter yesterday.

I think it's journalists, journalists in my practice released this poll.

About 20 to 30% of Kentuckians have already voted in early voting.

The election is essentially underway and you don't see media outlets releasing exit polls a day of for a reason.

It can play with play with the turnout.

I also think the results are bad.

Everything that we know about politics and the way politics functions and elections function, the way people think and votes move.

None of that is reflected in this poll.

I think it's probably a bad sample.

When you look at the crosstabs, only about 20% of it are people over the age of 65, which especially as turnout drops, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, that makes up a larger percentage of the voting base.

And I find very little that I believe to be factual in this poll.

Yes, there is no redeeming qualities, according to your seatmate here.

Amy gives.

What do you think?

So I think that there are a lot of things that are going to transpire in the next 24 hours that have the ability to really shake that poll up.

I think I've talked to various campaigns throughout the day.

Everybody's feeling some good momentum out there.

When you have historically low turnout, it's going to come down to who's base is going to actually go to the polls.

We have weather to contend with here in central Kentucky.

I saw a map that we're in under a severe tornado watch tomorrow.

I think that will affect turnout as well.

But look, you've got various endorsements that are rolling out.

Governor Ron DeSantis just rolled out an endorsement of Kelly Craft.

And Ron Coral's is feeling good after completing his 31 stops in three Day And the red trial.

Good.

They're all feeling good.

I think they all feel like they are going to leave it out on the field.

Daniel Cameron has to be feeling good as well.

All polls, all public polls that have been out there have showed him with a healthy lead.

And he's going to hope to maintain that tomorrow.

Mike Ward, a former Democratic congressman from Louisville, says no matter which Republican wins, the party will be divided after a bitter primary fight.

And the clear winner tomorrow is Andy Beshear, because he doesn't have to bring a party back together and he's not representing an electorate in this.

People, this group of people, this 10% of Republicans who have to be catered to by Daniel Cameron or whoever the nominee is who think that teachers are not the number one priority for our education system.

For example, in that poll, 10% of the people said the most important thing is teachers.

When we know we've got to hire more teachers, we even need more school bus drivers in Louisville.

But that's not what they're talking about.

They're talking about what's going to motivate their base.

And I think that tells us the way they'll govern.

So I think Andy's the one coming out ahead tomorrow.

You can see more of last night's very spirited discussion about the governor's race and the other races down ballot.

It's online on demand right now at Katie Dawg slash K-Y tonight.

Stick around after a Kentucky edition this evening because we've got special election coverage that begins right after a Kentucky edition at seven Eastern, six Central.

I'll be joined in the studio by Al Cross, Trey Grayson, Bob Babidge, Morgan Eaves and Scott Jennings and A-plus lineup.

We will discuss the results and analyze them.

And we have Kate Crews and reporters at different campaign headquarters across the state for the main gubernatorial contenders.

We'll carry the speeches and interviews with candidates even in the down ballot races.

So you want to stay with Kate all evening for the best comprehensive coverage of primary 2023, a round.

In other news, a shipment of nuclear waste makes its way out of Kentucky after being stored here for decades.

And the only county that's not posting absentee ballot counts to its website as the results come in tonight.

Those are some of the stories ma CMS said the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management has transferred uranium oxide, a key uranium enrichment byproduct out of storage in a western Kentucky facility to a conversion facility in Texas, according to CMS.

The first multi-car shipment of 60 uranium oxide storage cylinders left by rail from the DeWeese site at the former Paducah gaseous diffusion plant last week.

The DOE said this is an essential step to address one of the nation's most significant environmental legacies from the Cold War era.

The Laurel County Board of Elections said it will not be posting absentee ballot counts on its website on election night, making it the only county in the state to decline a request by the Kentucky State Board of Elections.

That's according to the Sentinel Echo.

It said the state Board of Elections contacted county clerks across the state to reprogram their equipment to post absentee voting results by precinct.

But the Laurel County clerk and the Laurel County Board of Elections said they believe that could identify voters and violate voter's constitutional rights.

In the past, absentee votes have always been posted as one total rather than listed by precinct.

The Sentinel Echo said Election officials explained in a letter that with the change, the secrecy of those ballots could not be ensured and such a change would not be advisable at this point.

The West Kentucky Star reports.

The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife is suing a Louisville hunter who illegally brought in a deer carcass from Wisconsin that later tested positive for chronic wasting disease.

Chronic wasting disease is a highly infectious disease that kills deer and elk.

The West Kentucky star said.

This marks the first time Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources has sought civil damages against a hunter for importing a disease deer carcass.

Louisville's library union is asking the city council to increase funding for library security.

Louisville Public Media reports the president of the union told the council the staff of the Louisville Free Public Library have dealt with stalking, assault and mistreatment for years.

But there's been an uptick in the past few years.

The union is recommending increasing the number of security guards, giving them de-escalation training, setting longer bans for patrons who sexually harass workers, and having library administrators hold debriefing sessions with staff after serious incidents.

Mayor Craig Greenberg's proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes more than $24 million for the public library system, CMS reports.

In honor of its 90th anniversary.

The Tennessee Valley Authority this summer is offering public tours of some of the utility companies dams, including tours at Kentucky Dam in Grand Rivers.

The tours will show the inner workings of a dam and teach people about how hydropower is produced since the demand for tours is high.

TVA will randomly draw from applications submitted to its website with headlines around Kentucky, I'm Toby Gibbs.

May is Foster Care Awareness Month and Kentucky.

More than 8600 children are currently in foster care, and more foster parents are needed to provide safe and stable homes for them.

Katie's Christy Daughton tells us how Kentucky is striving to become a foster friendly state with the help of a new tool designed to improve outcomes for foster families.

Being a foster parent can be exciting and rewarding, but many foster families find that they need more support and resources throughout that process.

Nationally, nearly half of foster families quit within the first year.

Valerie Buerkle is here from Kentucky.

Kids belong to tell us how her organization is working to change that.

Thank you for being here, Valerie.

For having me.

So tell us, Kentucky is striving to be a foster friendly state.

What does that mean?

So Foster friendly basically was provided by America's Kids Belong, which is our parent company.

And we provided that in order to help foster families have more resources to help feel supported and so that they don't quit within that first year.

Our mission is to dramatically improve the outcomes and experiences of kids in foster care, and we do that by kind of helpin For example, they could have discounts akin to military discounts to restaurants, different services activities, even just to name a few.

We have the Louisville Slugger Museum, Waterfront Botanical Gardens.

There's Jets, Pizza, just any kind of thing that would help families feel supported.

And you all are connecting foster families to these resources by this new app.

So you launched you all had a launch party for this new app.

It's called Foster Friendly.

I was on the app and it has everything from cupcakes to oil change discounts.

So tell us how that helps to support these families.

Right.

So speaking from personal experience, you know, sometimes as a foster parent, we would go to bed at night as a family of six and we would wake up the next morning in the middle of the night phone call and we could wake up with a family of eight.

So that does kind of impact your financial stability.

And what are you going to do the next day for dinner?

And you can get on that app and you can feel supported by, oh, we're just going to have pizza tonight.

And you see on there that there's just pizza.

So that, you know, even if it's just a small token of support, you feel seen and you feel heard as a foster parent.

Yeah.

To help get through some of those tough times, I noticed on there, there's also community support and faith community supports, too, for support groups.

So to be with other foster families to learn from each other.

And that's got to help to retain some of these foster families to correct.

Our mission also is to see how many churches that we can get to come in and say, yes, we will stand up and give that wraparound support for these families.

As far as maybe it's just childcare, maybe it's a night out for the parents to give them a break or it's training in trauma training so that they know how to help these kids in certain situations.

Okay, so where can we find this app?

So if you go on our website, K kids belong dot org, you'll see our foster friendly site there.

Foster parents can sign up.

It's just a couple of questions.

It is easy to sign up and it downloads and you have instant access to these discounts and businesses.

Are you asking more businesses if they're interested in participating lately?

And if you know a business that you would like to nominate, you can get on there and nominate them as well.

But it's just as easy for businesses to apply as well as just a few questions.

It gets sent straight through to me and it can be posted the same day.

Okay.

Thank you so much for being here, Valerie.

Again, that's foster friendly app.

You can download it straight to your phone from the App Store.

Back to you.

Thank you, Christy Jordan.

And as she said, the foster friendly app is free for anyone to download in the Google Play or the Apple App Store.

New Vista Health and Substance Use Services Mobile Crisis Unit is the Behavioral Health Center as a way of bringing care to patients wherever they are.

We paid a visit to the program at New Vistas Lexington Campus, where the Community Mental Health Center for the Bluegrass Region, which is Lexington and the surrounding Fayette County and the surrounding counties.

So in total that 17 counties and we are the safety net for all behavioral health services.

The idea is to go out into the community, whether it be schools, primary care office instead of law enforcement, whether they're calling our nine, eight, eight or one 800 928 8000 crisis number and they're the client or the family member is dealing with a behavioral health crisis that we respond either through consulting over the phone or going to the scene.

And we go out in pairs.

We provide assessment, we connect as needed, and we try to avoid people going to emergency rooms or the police being called and connect them more with behavioral health services.

So say it's a caller that's in crisis and they're calling either our nine, eight, eight number or one 800 number.

I will say that most of those calls, at least 80%, are resolved on the phone.

If they do go to mobile crisis, our hotline or crisis line will triage it, connect them with the mobile crisis team, and they will either go through our team, lead that kind of triage as the call or directly to the team member that is on shift to go out and they find out kind of what's going on, what is needed.

For the most part, we can respond within an hour.

Our teams are spread out.

Our staff are spread out over 17 counties.

If they don't want to wait for transportation and someone to come to the scene, we can also provide telehealth.

But I think we're really fortunate in our region, especially with Lexington police, that most of the Lexington police officers are city trained, which is crisis intervention teams, which are police training for behavioral health response.

So that helps them respond or that helps them have the tools to respond.

However, having a mental health professional respond when someone is struggling with a mental health crisis makes more sense than a police response.

So it's the same idea of if you're having a medical health crisis, you don't usually call the police.

You call an ambulance to treat the medical issues if you're having a behavioral health crisis.

Calling us, we're not in uniform.

That's our specialty is behavioral health care.

New Vista has been given the federal designation of Certified Community Behavioral Health Center, allowing it to further expand its services.

Summer is right around the corner, and that means more people are buying and selling homes.

Kate Kelsey Starks explores what's next for the housing market in Kentucky.

Well, here in Louisville, the sales prices continue to rise on homes and inventory remains low.

And Elizabeth Delahanty is the treasurer elect of Kentucky Realtors explaining what this means for homebuyers.

We're heading into that season where people are looking to buy or sell a home.

What are the latest trends here in Kentucky?

So thank you for asking me that, Kelsey.

The latest trends here are just what you said.

We're still seeing an increase in median and average sales prices, which is great for homeowners.

They have more equity in their home now than they have in the past.

The days on the market is a little longer, so houses are not going under contract quite as quickly as they were.

But having said that, in the 11 counties in the Louisville area, it's gone from 32 days on the market to 47.

So we're not seeing a big increase.

And that's true across the state.

So it's taken a little longer for houses to get under contract, but we're still seeing buyers and multiple offers.

There's high demand and we do need more inventory, We need more properties to sell.

Okay, so what kind of advice would you give if somebody is looking to buy or sell a home coming up this summer?

Well, number one is seek out your trusted realtor.

Seek out a realtor in your community because realtors are in all 120 counties and we are community advocates and we know a lot about what's going on.

And we can help you.

We have a fiduciary duty to help you.

And so you want to reach out to a trusted real estate professional who then will walk you through the entire process.

There's still a great loan programs out there, very creative financing options to help a buyer.

So an even for first time homebuyers.

Absolutely.

We have a great Kentucky housing corporation, has a down payment assistance program there, rural housing opportunities.

And of course, you can't go wrong with a VA FHA loan or conventional loan program.

Okay.

So let's talk about House Bill 62, which tackled the issue of wholesaling, and you all considered a top legislative priority this session and it was passed.

So explain what is wholesaling and why that was so important.

Yes.

Well, first of all, I want to recognize our main bill sponsor, Speaker Pro Tem David Mead, who is a realtor in Lincoln County, and he was the main sponsor and he understood the need to address the whole selling issue in Kentucky.

So wholesaling is when someone enters into a contract and then they immediately advertise that contract for sale before it closes.

So they are advertising.

They're not abiding by Kentucky advertising laws that real estate licensees have to adhere to.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

We appreciate your expertise.

Kentucky realtors represent about 13,000 realtors in every county all across Kentucky.

Thank you.

I'll say right now, Kentucky is considered to be a seller's market with an inventory low and sell price is high.

That's comparable with the rest of the country.

May 16th is Love a Tree Day.

And we're going to leave you with some fun facts about trees In Kentucky, 49% of Kentucky is covered by forests or about 12 million acres, according to the U.S. News and World Report.

That puts Kentucky 22nd among the 50 states.

Maine is first.

It's 90% covered by force.

The Earth has 3 trillion trees, about 422 trees for every one person.

So let's hug a tree today.

As a reminder, we're just a few minutes away from KET Special primary coverage will be with you throughout the night until the winners are declared.

So stay with us throughout the evening and then join us Wednesday night on Kentucky Edition as we recap the winners and losers and look ahead to the fall matchups for governor and other statewide races.

Thanks so much for being with us for Kentucky Edition.

Hang around for more Primary 2023 coverage right here on KET.

I'm Renee Shaw.

See you in a few