I'm Emily Prince, and joining us now for our Reporter's Notebook segment is Ken Hornbeck of Wink, Inc.. And thanks so much for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

It's always a pleasure.

So the big news, political news as of late is in Kentucky's fourth congressional district race.

A couple of third party candidates have jumped into that race.

Of course, Ed Ryan is the Republican primary winner there.

And then Melissa Strange will be the Democratic nominee.

But you've done extensive reporting about this race and now these new third party candidates.

What can you tell us about them?

Right.

So the two new candidates are Jeremy Todd, representing the Libertarian Party, and Mohammed Ahmed, representing the Kentucky Party.

So first, I'll talk a little bit about the libertarian candidate.

Jeremy Todd is based out of Northern Kentucky.

And in the wake of Thomas Massey's loss in the Kentucky fourth Congressional district GOP primary to go Ryan, there was some appetite among libertarians to put up another candidate to challenge at Ryan in the fall election.

So essentially, they felt dissatisfied with a lot of that gal Ryan and the broader Republican Party's policy position, specifically as it relates to the war in Iran, foreign influence, etc.. So they're kind of putting up a protest challenger to siphon votes away from at Gary Ryan in November.

Or at least that is the thought process.

Provide libertarians with an alternative to the Republican Party, because generally libertarians tend to vote with the Republican Party more often than not.

And Thomas Massie had a very strong libertarian ideological bent.

The other candidate, Mohammed Ahmad, is a pro-Palestinian activist based out of Northern Kentucky.

He's very critical of Zionism and the Israeli government.

And he has an organization called the Northern Kentucky for Palestine Coalition.

Mohammed himself is a Palestinian American, and he jumped into this race to protest the United States and Israeli government involvement in the Iranian war.

He wants to see America go in a different foreign policy direction.

So that's kind of his rationale for joining into the race.

Both of them were supporters of Thomas Massie during the GOP primary.

As we know, Thomas Massie lost.

Great points there.

And so, just so folks know, what does it take for a third party candidate to get in the race and actually have their name appear on the ballot?

Right.

So you need 400 signatures on a petition by a certain date.

Both candidates fielded enough signatures to be able to be put on the ballot now, because they're not associated with either major political party, Republicans and Democrats.

They did not need to go through the traditional primary process.

So essentially, as long as they got enough signatures, according to Kentucky state law, they will appear on the November ballot.

It was an interesting point that you had made in one of your recent reports.

Like you mentioned earlier, that was pretty calculated, right?

Because the petition effort to get Jeremy Todd on the ballot came just one day after Thomas Massey's lost right.

That's right.

So immediately after the May 19th primary loss, the Libertarian Party infrastructure in the state went, you know, full force into creating, a challenger for Mr.

Gal Ryan.

So they had this, I believe, in the back of their minds before Thomas Massey's election results were even announced.

As far as Mr.

Ammad goes, I'm not sure as much about his calculus, but I do believe the libertarians had something cooking in the works.

If the primary did not work out the way they wanted it to.

We'll definitely keep our eyes out to see if what kind of traction these third party candidates get.

But I want to jump now to another topic the Brain Spence Bridge.

It's been something that we've all been covering for quite some time now, and construction is getting closer to being underway for that corridor between Covington and Cincinnati.

There was some video that circulated just a few days ago, showing a barge coming down the Ohio River with equipment to get that project underway.

So what kind of updates can you provide for us?

What do we know about any developments with this project?

Well, a barge floating down the Ohio River, the most Kentucky scene of all time.

It's good to have it back.

Well.

A barge and other barges have, you know, entered the greater Cincinnati River zones in the past couple days carrying construction equipment for the Brant Spence Bridge corridor project, which is, you know, projected to be one of the largest American infrastructure projects going on in the next couple of years.

It's going to cost $3 billion plus at minimum.

So I've noticed, just as a resident of Covington, that there's already starting to be work done along the interstate for the expansion of the highway.

You can see that construction crews are starting to post up along the highway, start clearing stuff, whether that be brush or other foliage.

You've seen some traffic slowdowns a little bit.

And actually on June 8th, many of the major exits from the interstate going into the city of Covington will be closed down for a period of time.

I know 12th Street or Martin Luther King Boulevard exits will be closed.

So it's something to keep an eye on.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet announced that the other day.

So this is really after the past couple of years of announcements coming out.

The actual construction is finally starting to ramp up, and I think that will be impacting the daily flights of people traveling to and from Kentucky, people in the greater Cincinnati area for at least the next couple of years.

Absolutely.

And we know that's a pretty common commute, right, for most Northern Kentuckians to go across the river.

So it'll be interesting to see the pain points that come there for residents, but also for the city, which kind of leads us in to maybe our final topic.

It's about the city of Covington.

Of course, that's Northern Kentucky's largest city.

They just proposed their budget for the fiscal 27 year, and I believe it was about $84 million worth of expenses from the city's general fund.

It looks like from what I saw, that there is going to be an increase in projected revenue.

But also expenses.

Anything that stood out to you from what you saw, that proposed budget, right.

To say so, I guess to provide some context.

The city of Covington had a massive budget shortfall just in 2023, kind of in the back half of the Covid 19 pandemic, because one of the major employers in the city, the fidelity investment firm, which is located in South Covington, had a lot of its workers on remote work, and they weren't directly paying taxes to the city of Covington.

Nathan Granger, my colleague, did a lot more reporting on that.

But over the past couple of years, it's been a recovery of budgetary revenues.

But with that, the city of Covington has a lot of in-house services, is expensive to run.

So there's also been a simultaneous increase in expenses.

And you're seeing that laid out in the budget.

City Manager Sean Ready in a press release from the city of Covington, said that there's going to be $2.2 million dedicated to road infrastructure improvements, which I know is a big key, especially, as we mentioned earlier, the Brant Spence Bridge is going to happen.

So they want to shore up that road infrastructure to help residents in the wake of that construction project.

They want the core functions of the city to go off without a hitch and make life easier for the residents.

Yes, there certainly are a lot happening in Covington, like we say with the bridge, Spence Bridge, but so many other developments too.

So a lot going on in that city.

Kenton, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

As always.

Such a pleasure to talk with you.

Thanks for having me.

Like usual.