I have thankfully still found ways to be active in the month or so since I was laid off at the Herald-Leader. People and organizations around town have very kindly continued to reach out to me for writing and pieces focused on Lexington’s upcoming mayoral and council elections. Here is a quick round-up of some of what I have been doing to help educate and prepare voters!

• WEKU interviewed me in mid-October to discuss the current state of the city’s mayoral election. This 12 minute interview discusses how Linda Gorton’s incumbency is a benefit and a burden, what challenger Raquel Carter’s vision for Lexington is, and how national issues are affecting the race now as compared to the 2022 mayoral election. You can listen here.
• On October 21st, I moderated a forum for Fayette Alliance featuring five of the six At-Large Council candidates! Questions focused on how to handle controversial new student housing developments, ideas for zoning reforms, agricultural policies and more. You can watch clips from the forum here at Fayette Alliance’s website.
• I moderated individual conversations between At-Large Council candidates and small groups of voters for CivicLex’s At-Large Ice Cream Social! This event allowed attendees to ask questions directly to individual candidates on topics important to this election. I moderated conversations with candidates on private student housing development. No recordings exist from this session, but some University of Kentucky students wrote a recap of the event for CivicLex that you can read here.
• My friends at My Old Kentucky Podcast reached out to me about writing an election preview for Lexington’s local races for the show’s Substack. This piece is an outright political analysis piece that is unlike anything I have written before, but it outlines the nuances of how voters percieve candidates in the mayor and council races. Is it rank punditry? Kind of! But I am proud of how it turned out. Read it here.