Free Republic

Rep. Denny Butler of Louisville has switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. ... The impetus for Butler’s decision to move from the Democratic ranks to the Republican column may stem from retiring Rep. Larry Clark’s endorsement of Alan Gentry in the Democratic primary to replace him in the 46th House District... “I know there’s been a, sort of a feud down there in the district that Larry Clark represented,” Stumbo said at the Kentucky Association of Counties conference in Lexington. “I assume that has something to do with it, but I hope that he will reconsider. He comes...

I'm sure members of the Circle of Jerks will look on this and give it a complete pass. They will not see the media bias. But even Democrats in Kentucky are expressing outrage at the Lexington Herald-Leader's decision to run an editorial cartoon comparing Matt Bevin's children to terrorists. The cartoonist, Joel Pett, was reacting to Matt Bevin's call to curtail the influx of Syrian refugees. Bevin has multiple children adopted from overseas and regularly conducts Christian mission trips to Africa. You'd think a man like that might be someone to listen to when even he expresses concerns about Syrian...

With 106 of the state’s 120 counties in his column, Republican Gov.-elect Matt Bevin said the state’s electoral map last week represented “a cry for help from the people of Kentucky” during his remarks to the Republican Party of Kentucky’s state central committee on Saturday. The meeting of top GOP officials doubled as a rallying cry ahead of next year’s legislative races, with Republicans vying for control of the state’s House of Representatives for the first time since 1921. The celebratory mood at the Ramada Plaza in Louisville on Saturday offered a stark contrast with the feeling among Democratic leaders,...

Gov. Steve Beshear gave a forceful defense of federal health programs he enacted during his final term in office, urging Gov.-elect Matt Bevin, who campaigned aggressively on scrapping the state-based exchange kynect and altering expanded Medicaid, to reconsider his position on Friday. Beshear mentioned Bevin by name repeatedly during a Capitol news conference highlighting recent health progress in the state, pointing to statistics showing increased health coverage and economic activities in his appeal to the Republican. “During election season the political rhetoric tends to be strong and the promises bold,” said Beshear, a Democrat. “But the fun and games are...

Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer will serve as grand marshal of Gov.-elect Matt Bevin’s Inaugural Parade, Bevin’s team announced on Friday. Meyer is one of only three living recipients of the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest decoration. On Sept. 8, 2009, the then-21-year-old Meyer is credited with saving 36 Marines from Taliban forces. “It is truly an honor to have Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Dakota Meyer to serve as our Grand Marshall,” Bevin said in a press release. “We want military veterans and others in uniform to be central figures at this inauguration. This will be...

Obama insists that DEMOCRATS are the future of America saying that the Republican party is 'outdated.' In reality, Obama is dead wrong. More Republicans are making massive gains at the state and local levels. Take the victory of the governor elect Matt Bevin in Kentucky recently! Bevin, a Tea Party favorite became only the second Republican in four decades to win Kentucky’s governorship! The Washington Post reports: With Matt Bevin’s win in Kentucky on Tuesday night, Republicans now hold 32 of the nation’s governorships — 64 percent of all the governors mansions in the country. (One race, in Louisiana, won’t...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: They're already after the Kentucky governor. Before the guy is even sworn in, predictably, this is a prediction that I made -- gee, I don't know, years ago. I'll just tell you this, you'll see what I mean. This is from the Washington Post: "Kentucky’s Newly Insured Worry About Their Health Under Next Governor." (laughing) We just had a Republican governor, a Tea Party guy, a staunch conservative win in a landslide in Kentucky, in part running against Obamacare, and here comes the Drive-By Media saying that the people in Kentucky are now getting scared and they're...

FRANKFORT, KY, November 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - On December 8, Kentucky will have a new governor, and Kim Davis will have a chance to do her job without denying her faith. Governor-elect Matt Bevin has promised that he will change the state's marriage forms, removing the name of the county clerk entirely - the reform Davis had pleaded with state lawmakers to enact before spending five days in jail. Davis, the clerk of Rowan County in eastern Kentucky, is a born again Christian who believes participating in a same-sex "marriage" would make her guilty of a major sin. Before the...

You don't have to wander long in the liberal commentariat to find projections that the Republican Party is in a death spiral, doomed by demographics, discredited by the dissension among House Republicans, disenchanted with its experienced presidential candidates and despised by the great mass of voters. There is something to be said for each of these propositions -- and yet Republican candidates keep winning elections, as in recent contests in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia. Admittedly, the first three of these states have been solidly Republican in recent presidential and congressional elections, and Americans have increasingly been straight-ticket voters. But...

And Republicans across the country should take note. According to all the polls leading up to last Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in Kentucky, Republican businessman Matt Bevin wasn’t supposed to have a chance. This was the same Matt Bevin who had launched a lamentably unsuccessful primary campaign last year against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and was treated by much of the press in the state (OK, technically the commonwealth) as a loose cannon who couldn’t be taken seriously. But Mr. Bevin pounded away at ObamaCare. And if you’re wondering why, since that’s ostensibly a national issue, you might recall that...

Kentucky Gov.-elect Matt Bevin said in an appearance on The Glenn Beck Radio Program Friday that he will push back against the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate the coal industry, telling the EPA to “pound sand.” Bevin’s comments came after Glenn Beck asked, “Now that you’re in, President Obama has said that he’s going to destroy the coal industry. Kentucky is a coal state. What are you going to be doing specifically to push back on that?” In August, President Barack Obama unveiled his coal policy in partnership with the EPA, granting the agency authority over what is traditionally...

FRANKFORT — Republican Gov.-elect Matt Bevin plans to make marriage licensing one of his first priorities after his inauguration Dec. 8, pledging Friday to take executive action to strip county clerks’ names from the documents. Bevin spoke to the media in the Capitol Rotunda in his first post-election news conference, where he reiterated his plan to shutter Kentucky’s health insurance exchange, kynect, as well as his stance against releasing his tax returns. The state’s next governor spent much of his day at the Capitol meeting with his transition team and legislative leaders, saying he expects to announce his chief of...

LOUISVILLE (Reuters) - Kentucky Governor-elect Matt Bevin said on Friday that when he takes office in December he will order changes to the state marriage license form to appease clerks who have objected to issuing licenses to same-sex couples. "One thing I will take care of right away is we will remove the names of the county clerks from the marriage form," Bevin told reporters in the Capitol rotunda. Bevin, only the second Republican elected governor in Kentucky since 1971, said he would make the change by executive order. It is unclear what impact his order would have on the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Man, oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. You wake up today -- maybe you were paying attention last night, I don't know -- but you wake up today and find out what happened, you may not even have known in some parts of the country it was Election Day yesterday. And if you're one of the ones who didn't, you wake up today and you find out, holy cow, it happened again. You have to be buoyed. If you don't know what happened last night via the election returns just hang in there because I'm gonna tell...

Last night's off-year elections produced a number of noteworthy outcomes, none larger than Republican Matt Bevin's upset victory in Kentucky's gubernatorial race. Bevin ran as a hard-charging outsider conservative, warts and all. Public polls gave his opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, a modest but stable lead throughout the race's home stretch, averaging out to a three-point Conway advantage in a three-way contest. They were off by double digits. Bevin won handily:DailyKos tweet at link ... Bevin, boosted by a massive investment from national Republicans and help from his former nemisis Mitch McConnell, nationalized the race, tying Conway to President Obama at...

Kentucky's newest lieutenant governor-elect is unique in many ways. She and her running mate, Gov.-elect Matt Bevin, are some of this election cycle's first victorious political outsiders. (Bevin had been likened to Donald Trump). Jenean Hampton is also the first African American to be elected to statewide office in Kentucky. And she's just one of a handful of black women on the national level to identify with the tea party movement.

Although Kentucky had elected only one Republican governor in the last four decades, Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin handily defeated Democrat Jack Conway yesterday. The off-year election, one of many state and local contests held Tuesday ‎across the country, was seen by some as a test for outsider candidates at a time when several such candidates are seeking the GOP presidential nomination. Bevin, who has run as an outsider ever since he unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Mitch McConnell last year, was declared the winner over state Attorney General Conway in the gubernatorial race shortly after polls closed Tuesday evening. The victory...

Most of the attention in politics has focused on the 2016 elections, but a few contests on this Election Day 2015 are worth noting, too. Republicans have had a long history of frustration in gubernatorial races in otherwise friendly Kentucky, and they may well add another chapter of failure today — unless a last-minute infusion of cash can bridge the gap for Matt Bevin: Republicans are pouring money into a last-minute effort in Tuesday’s Kentucky gubernatorial race, aiming to rescue Matt Bevin’s struggling campaign and keep the GOP from again being shut out of the conservative state’s governorship.Bevin, who...

Republican establishment take note: At the end of the night a Kentucky Democrat called the crushing defeat of his Party’s candidate a result of “Trump-mania.” For the GOPe, in just one year Matt Bevin has come from “annoying” to “serious” to Governor Elect of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Bevin, the personification of “outsider,” has won a resounding victory in the Blue Grass State that changes the make-up of its government across the board. Sweeping to a victory that the pollsters tried to convince Kentuckians would be an upset if at all, Bevin whipped the tar out of Democrat Jack Conway...