Time now for end of week review of some major political news this week.

And we've got one who's back for a three peat this week.

Jared Smith with Piper Smith and Abbey Piper with Piper Smith.

You've seen them before.

So we're going to talk about election stuff as if we haven't talked about it a lot.

But when we last left on Tuesday night, there were still some races that had not been finalized.

And so we we've learned that they have been and one of them, a couple of them in northern Kentucky, the one with Representative Kent Moser, is one.

Yeah.

I mean, she almost fell victim to very, very low turnout.

And that's what happens.

Low turnout.

You know, she's an excellent legislator.

I'm glad that she survived that.

And, you know, she does a lot of good work for that district.

And so, you know, I'm really glad she survived it and came through.

You know, things are getting weird up in northern Kentucky.

There's no other way to.

Say you believe, Abby Piper, that things are weird in.

Northern Kentucky.

Well, I did not Dawes in northern Kentucky and I did not Dawes with Representative Moser.

And I wouldn't say weird, but, you know, tides are definitely continuing to shift in that further right direction.

She's one of the only candidates we know of, especially in the incumbent category, that managed to hold her own against the Liberty faction.

And so, you know, that is notable, I think, particularly given the fact that she took a good amount of heat and was not immune to the things that many others were, like Representative Timoney and some others, where a lot of falsehoods were spread and things were put out there that weren't necessarily true in an attempt to kind of urge that narrative back out there.

So it's a big win for the institution and institutional caucus.

I would say that the general caucus.

So be good to have her back.

She's a health chair.

And, you know, any time you have a lot of turnover in the legislature, it's really good to have institutional memory there.

And she certainly has that, particularly in the health arena.

So, you know, it's a win.

Yeah.

And some notable losses of incumbents.

Representative Killian Tammany and the 45th District, Adrian Southworth and the seventh Senate District and Representative Richard Heath.

Yeah, in.

Western.

Kentucky.

Well that does represent the heath loss.

Goes to show you that all politics is hyperlocal.

That was a very local election.

There was a lawsuit filed by him against a very popular family.

I think the lawsuit was served during the patriarch's funeral of the family.

So just bad timing all around.

And again, what's the you get?

You know, if you're in a local election, be careful about local politics.

Yeah.

T.J. Roberts, Ed Massey in the 66th District School choice is a big issue there.

That's a constitutional proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.

You think this is going to be this year's abortion issue?

You know, it very well could be.

But what makes this really different is that it really is exacerbated by the rural and urban divide, more so than I think that the abortion ballot initiative was on that one.

You really had kind of half to say this female, half the state is male and females looking at the slippery slope of what health care landscape looks like in the future.

This is really more about do you want state dollars to go to private schools?

And the fact is the vast majority of our private schools are in those urban centers.

They're in northern Kentucky, right in the Cincinnati Covington.

And what bleeds through on that there in Lexington, they're in Louisville to some degree.

They're in Owensboro in Bowling Green.

And so, you know, that's going to take dollars state dollars and funnel them into those urban areas, which is a trend that many Republican rural lawmakers have been trying to reverse.

And quite frankly, care of when it was put into place in 1990 was specifically designed to take those dollars and redistribute them more into those poorer and more rural areas to ensure equity.

And so, you know, I think the constitutional amendment is very much about educational equity funding.

Equity, and do we really want to put public dollars in our private schools in rural and urban areas?

The other thing that you have to remember about this is that in most states that have already done this, the vast majority of those funds go to families and students who were already enrolled in public or in private schools.

And so you have to really think about does that really subsidizing private education at the expense of public education.

But all of that messaging is really hard to get across.

Right.

And the question on the ballot won't contain all of that.

So how do you think this is going to go down?

I think it's both sides going to be heavily funded.

It's going to be pretty much the talk of the election since besides the president presidential election, this will be it because there's no Senate race or a big congressional race.

And so what I see is it's going to be, you know, I don't see rural people voting for this.

I don't see anybody outside the triangle voting for this, you know, because it's so easy to say, you know, schools like Sarah and Collegiate and Kentucky country, they don't need public money.

Why would we give them public money and look at other states as happened.

Arizona is in a world of hurt right now over their voucher programs.

So much bankrupted their state, quite frankly.

And you saw this week actually the GOP in Colorado asking all families to withdraw their children from public schools.

I'm not sure where they want them to go if that's an effort to get them to home school or private schools.

But that's a very dangerous slope.

You know, let's let's be careful here.

You know this I don't want to downplay this.

That's the Colorado GOP telling its members to pull their kids out of all public schools.

That's insanity.

Yeah.

For they they afraid they're groomed.

They're being groomed.

Being groomed.

Right.

Look, if you all think rumors go on, just go.

Go spend one day in a public school and see how hard those teachers are fighting for education.

Right.

About this year is that you know, that half of our public school teachers are Republicans.

I mean, they're not they're not indoctrinating children to become transgender.

And so there's just a lot of misinformation out there.

And but I think Colorado is a great example of that severe misinformation and the byproduct that can become a reality.

Yeah, this is a different election year.

I mean, it is a presidential election, but we know Kentuckians will probably go heavily in one direction.

Right.

There is no US Senate race.

There's no statewide contest.

So I think, you know, turnout was still like 13%.

I mean, you know, of course it will be higher in the general, but interesting this election so far, you think that will increase?

I think that I think people will come out to vote for the amendment.

I do think that will increase turnout a little bit.

I don't think turnout is going to be creates that much, though.

I mean, Biden and Trump are not popular.

I mean, Trump's popular here.

But overall, you know, I don't see.

You know, Nikki Haley didn't even get what, 6% here?

You know, Kentucky's more Trump here than West Virginia.

So I don't see people running to the polls except for MAGA.

I don't see people excited to go vote.

Yeah.

How do you see it, Abby?

Well, in any year that you don't have a large statewide contingency of races, you're going to see the more radical folks on both ends of the spectrum that, you know, folks that are far left and far right are more likely, just as they are in the primaries to go vote.

And so it's important that folks in the middle remember that their voice counts.

And it is important to let folks know that they don't speak for you.

Right.

And to do that.

But I think turnout is always an issue and really something we should focus on a lot more.

I do think Kentucky is a very red state and Trump, when he comes to Kentucky, he draws big crowds.

So I don't know that I would assume that there would be apathy around the ballot with Trump on it.

Yeah.

Well, so much more to come.

It's been an interesting week.

You all have talked about it a lot.

We've talked about it a lot.

I think we'll put it to bed for a little bit until fancy Farm, which I don't know if that would be much unless there's some big surrogate that comes in for Fancy Farm.

Yeah, I mean, we thought about that.

Yeah, but that's actually who's going to speak.

He's going.

To speak.

I think a lot depends on what Mitch McConnell chooses to do between now and then, if he chooses to continue serving or if he makes some kind of an announcement with which I don't expect.

Okay.

But, you know, there is turnover and obviously we're going to have turnover in the Kentucky Senate as well with Senator Thayer leaving.

So I think you'll see some different power players begin to emerge.

And Comer does have a general election.

So he will show up and That's right.

Yeah, that's right.

And that's in that in that district, believe it or not, it is.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

It's always good to see you.

I've seen him three times this week.

It's good to see you.

Sorry.

Yeah, it's okay.

We tolerated that.

It's fine.

Have a good weekend, guys.

Thanks.