Time now for a midweek check in of some major political news so far this week with our good friend Roland Martin with Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see you to rename.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving holiday.

And it's back to business, right?

So let's talk about some recent news when it comes to those people who work in the state capitol, state lawmakers.

We have one individual from Louisville who says, you know, I don't know if I want to go back to Frankfort after this next session and I'm going to try something new.

Yeah.

Democratic State Representative Jose Raymond, who's been there for a few terms now, is announced that she's not going to seek reelection next year and will be running instead for Louisville Metro Council.

Part of what she said was just it's so hard getting anything done as a Democrat in the legislature.

She started when she was in the minority.

Now, that's the super minority.

Democrats are at a low watermark in state history at this point.

20 out of the 100 seats in the House and a similar ratio in the state Senate.

And she said that a lot of the things that Republican leaders have been pushing for, she finds to be incredibly hurtful.

So in recent years, anti-trans legislation, anti LGBTQ legislation, the, you know, so called anti critical race theory movement from a couple of years ago.

And so it sounds like she's had it and she's decided instead to run for Louisville Metro Council where, you know, Democrats are in the majority there.

And she feels like she can get a little bit more done.

And interestingly enough, a former state, rather, Mary Lou Marcian, has announced her candidacy for that position.

So she used to hold that seat, but during redistricting.

Mary Lou, Marcy and Josie Raymond were district and into the same district.

And Marcin decided to drop out, not seek reelection, allowing Raymond to go forward.

To go forward.

Now, Josie, Raymond's out of the picture.

Mary Lou, Marcy is going to come back.

She's a veteran legislator.

She first joined the General Assembly in 1994.

So she was there for almost three decades and is trying to make a run again in a in a heavily Democratic district.

Yeah.

So we'll keep our eyes on that and see how that develops.

The another important date to remember the filing deadline for candidacy for 2024 has been moved up an earlier time to, I guess, spark some efficiency somewhere.

I'm not sure where and that's we think the first week in January that first Friday.

So why is that even significant?

Yeah, it's January 5th, that first Friday.

And as you said, this is a somewhat recent changes from a few years ago.

They move this filing deadline up.

The whole reason they did that was to try and get some of the politics out of the out of the the candidate filing process.

You know, there's always some some gamesmanship in deciding when to ultimately run to drop your name into the hat.

But by moving it out, it's it makes for a really hectic process at the beginning of the legislative session because during this week in which they've got other business to take care of and really just kind of getting the engines warmed up for the lawmaking session just four days later.

That Friday is the is the deadline for folks to run for office.

There's another complicating factor here, which is that we're still waiting on a ruling from the Kentucky Supreme Court on on the legislature's redistricting maps that passed a couple of years ago.

Democrats sued over how the maps for the House and Congress were drawn, saying that they unfairly favor Republican candidates.

And and the Supreme Court should will, you know, will weigh in on this eventually.

It's possible that that decision could come this month.

There's a rendition day.

That's the day when the court hands down rulings that will be on December 14th this month.

If there were a ruling and there's no saying that there would be against the maps, that would really throw things into a state of chaos for the legislature, they would likely have to delay that and the filing deadline in that first week.

So they'd have to pass a bill and have the governor sign it before the filing deadline, which.

Very quickly within three days.

Which is really, really I can't remember in my 27 years of Bill being able to pass both chambers in three days.

But I guess they could, because you don't have to have different readings on different days.

Right.

The Supreme Court clarified that.

So I guess it's possible.

They've been able to pull it off before they actually had to do a similar thing a couple of years ago when during when redistricting was taking place, they ended up having to delay the filing deadline because the maps hadn't been totally complete yet.

I remember that process correctly.

So there's some precedents for it.

And also, there's been a lot of trouble since this law passed to make that filing deadline earlier.

I can only imagine that legislative leaders are starting to get tired of having to worry about this every year.

Yeah.

So we'll see where that goes.

And so it could be that they have to take up redistricting again if the Supreme Court strikes them down.

Those that would that would likely be the process, which is what happened ten years ago when the court struck down the maps and lawmakers had to come back to the drawing board and draw new ones.

Yeah, so we'll see where that goes.

And we know that the other big issues, it's a budget year.

This is a 60 day session.

So we know the budget's going to be a main topic.

Education issues.

We've heard from legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle that maybe they take up some or consider some exceptions to the near total abortion ban on rape and incest.

So there's a lot that's on their plate for those 60 days that start on January the second.

Yeah.

And also coming up, there's there's more that will likely have to happen with the state's new medical marijuana law, which is supposed to go into effect January of 2025.

But there's some administrative parts to that that will have to take place this year and there will likely be some battle lines drawn over that.

Yeah, and we're hearing like child care assistance, you know, that could be a big issue because of the the issue with child care and the providers and lack thereof and the state.

So some of the same perennial issues we could be hearing again.

But a lot of that low hanging fruit that we had from last time, sports betting, the original medical marijuana income tax legislation, all that's off the table, right?

So this should be.

Associated with the income tax.

They're all with with drawing up a new budget.

There's going to be a new revenue bill as well.

And these are times when lawmakers, you know, like to try and mess with the tax policy a little bit.

We'll see if there's if they are trying to do something with the income tax.

They've always been reducing the income tax, looking for new opportunities to expand the sales tax to new services they've done several times in recent years.

Yeah, and we'll see if they do that again, because I think they do want to try to meet both of those economic conditions in order to get that trigger to happen.

I guess for 2026, if they can.

So we'll keep our eyes on it when the session starts January 2nd.

But a lot to do between now and then.

Thank you all in, Barton, for keeping your eyes on it.

Thanks for taking.