A former state senator is making a bid to return to elected office in Kentucky.

But this time it's not Frankfort but Washington.

Ralph Alvarado served in the Kentucky State Senate for about eight years, and most recently was the health commissioner for Tennessee.

Now he has his sights set on the open sixth Congressional District seat being vacated by Andy Barr, who's running for retiring Senator McConnell seat.

And part two of my interview with Alvarado, we talk about his Republican bona fides and his position on Covid vaccinations that political opponents could use against him.

Obviously, people were dying.

And, you know, I worked in nursing homes.

I saw almost 20% of my folks pass away because of Covid, and it was bad for the elderly, meaning that those that was a very vulnerable population.

But when they were younger people that were involved, we know that kids were not affected nearly as severely as that.

So people can go back and watch my tape.

I question when the Department of Education wanted to come in and start masking kids under the age of five, I said, The Europeans have looked at this.

It hasn't provided any benefit.

Under the age of 11, it didn't have any benefit.

High school there was it looked like there might have been some in terms of, you know, reduction of disease.

So we were learning as we went.

There were recommendations that came down.

We know that we wear masks to prevent transmission of disease.

If a surgeon is going to be working on your abdomen, you want him to wear a mask.

You don't want him sneezing or coughing into your abdomen for risk of transmitting an infection.

If a dentist is working on your mouth, you want him wearing a mask.

Why?

It prevents him from transmitting anything into your mouth.

Or, you know, none of us would want that.

So the same thing would apply for Tommy that would help reduce transmission.

There was a lot of theories on it.

Once we started getting past that, I think it got to the point.

Some people felt comfortable wearing them, some did not.

And I remember encouraging publicly that people could either, you know, don't don't judge someone on whether or not they want to wear a mask or not at that point to do that.

When vaccines first came out, that was the first opportunity we had for prevention.

And I thought the fact that it got brought out as quickly as it did was a tremendous accomplishment of the Trump administration.

And so we recommended that to to happen.

But as we go now, further along, people, there's also natural immunity.

I remind everybody, there was a joint a Senate joint resolution that I proposed recognizing natural immunity to be equal to vaccination.

And so we wound up passing that out of the Senate.

The House never took it up.

I don't know why I didn't have a chance through, but many countries had recognized that if you already had the infection, at least for a year, you had immunity to to a new infection.

It would count as being vaccinated.

I was proud of the fact that I got, you know, I got two words when I was in the state Senate for people defending medical freedom.

And so for me, I think I'm an individual who's always had that position in that stance.

But to act as though we were supposed to know what we know now.

Again, there's things that we learned moving forward that as we evolve on that, again, vaccine Covid vaccines are available.

I when I was commissioner, we lumped that into all the other respiratory vaccines.

We told the folks they're available.

They're recommended for people that have they're vulnerable and have high rates.

Go talk to your provider and see if it's right for you.

And that's the approach that we take now.

So it was a bad time.

I don't want to go back and live, back in 2020.

It was a rough year, 2021.

None of us want to relive those moments, to relive a plague for the world.

I'd rather move on and learn from what we've learned from those things and evolve.

And so I always tell people it's it's available.

It's, you know, it can still be recommended, but it's something you have to decide with your provider.

I've read where you had pledged to align with Donald, President Trump's America First agenda as you kicked off your congressional campaign.

And there are even other critics and those in the Republican ranks who believe that the president's actions when it comes to Venezuela, when it comes to the pursuit of Greenland, are the opposite of America first.

What do you view as America first?

And is President Trump getting it right and doing what he said he would do?

Yeah, I think I think America first is to is is considering it's working for the American people first.

I often use the example that we have the nicest house on the block, right?

America is the most beautiful.

It's the best country in the world.

We have the nicest house is the biggest mansion.

It's very, very nice.

Our neighbor's houses may not look as well.

Our neighbor's houses might have sick kids.

Kids?

They don't have clothes.

They don't.

They're not being fed.

But we have a kid who's sick at home.

We have a kid who probably needs a little bit better.

Our roof is leaking, one of our windows is broken.

The fence is down, the yard needs to be mowed.

You know, a hole in the floorboard.

Instead of saying, hey, I'm going to take what I've got and go fix up everybody else's houses, fix your own house first, fix the flooring, do all those things.

And then if your generation, we have friends that are out there, go and help your neighbors and see what you can do there.

So I think there's a responsibility for that, but it's also a responsibility for safety.

And so part of America first is making sure that people at home are safe and they feel secure.

I think the president's in a tremendous job with that.

Right?

I mean, he's trying to rebuild the economy, right?

He's trying to make sure that the economy is something that's going to be solid, that Americans can live the American dream.

He's worked very hard at reducing gas prices already.

Housing prices.

He's hoping gas.

Prices are not a $1.99 per gallon, as he has asserted.

Well, it depends on where you're at.

There's some places that are below $2 in the country, but there's several others.

It is much cheaper than it was.

You have to admit, if you go back and compare the price of gas from where it was a year, year and a half ago to where it is today, it's markedly reduced.

But again, to your point, it's got to be something that we're going to say, hey, we can say the stock market's doing better.

That's great.

The average citizen needs to feel that really at home.

So if you're going to go buy groceries, are my groceries more affordable?

Is my housing more affordable?

People need to feel that impact.

And again, it would be nice to snap your fingers after four years of bad policy to try to improve it and turn it around.

The president is working hard to try to make that better.

And it's been it's only been a year.

But I tell you.

He said on day one that he alone could fix.

It.

And I think he's doing that.

But you have to give him at least some time and some patience to make that happen, because it's in four years of destruction.

To say we're going to rebuild something in a year would be nice, and that would be the ideal.

But he's also trying to make a lot of those things happen.

Do you believe that you are the MAGA candidate and the sixth district Republican primary.

I think I mean, yes, I mean, as far as MAGA candidate, America first, Kentucky first.

I mean, that's my focus on things is I want to bring that same philosophy.

I think the president needs allies for a lot of what he's wanting to get accomplished.

So we want to focus on, again, things that are going to, you know, bring, bring a lot of investment into the state.

Someone who's going to be able to defend our values, our industries nationally.

Obviously we are very heavy on bourbon, our horse industry.

We have, you know, great universities in our, in our state that we're very proud of.

We want to make sure that our veterans are taken care of.

I think Congressman Barr, he's, you know, obviously proceeding in this role, I think he's laid out a great blueprint of what a congressman should be and look like and sound like for the district, to help with, you know, constituent services, that he's had one of the best in the country.

I, I pledge to continue that, to try to have veterans services to make sure our veterans can navigate a complicated system that will help take care of that.

And then at a time when we're in a point of transition on health care to bring, again, new ideas, I've got a unique perspective on, how the executive branch and legislative branch interact.

In state government to the federal government.

How those grand systems work, what works, what doesn't.

A lot of ideas on how to restructure health care, because just putting money in and taking money out doesn't fix the problem.

We have to find a new way, develop some trust back into the system, trust our providers, trust our patients, trust our states to do the system well.

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed another contender in the GOP primary for the sixth Congressional District, sitting State Representative Ryan Dotson.

You can find that interview along with Ralph Alvarado's, on our website at KETV.

Org slash election and more candidate conversations are to come on Kentucky edition.

Primary election day is May 19th.