For the first time in a long time, First District Democrats think they’ve got a real-deal congressional candidate in Erin Marshall, a 30-year-old single mom from Frankfort who’s challenging MAGA Republican Rep. James Comer.
Democrats are still abuzz about Marshall’s speech at Saturday’s Fancy Farm picnic. Fans include Calloway County Democratic Executive Committee members Terry Strieter and his wife, Sara Fineman, who were in the crowd for the speechmaking.
“Right afterward, I emailed her and said ‘Erin you did a tremendous job of not getting flustered and not being silenced or even slowed down,’” said Strieter, the committee vice chair. “She just powered on.”
Fineman summed up Marshall’s remarks in a single word: “Fierce. I am so happy that she’s going to win and we’re going to get somebody in office to help us rather than working against us.”
Marshall’s introductory remarks might have rung a bell with some senior citizen Democrats: “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Erin Marshall and I am running to represent the First Congressional District.”
Forty-eight years ago, a not-so-well known Georgia Democratic governor similarly introduced himself: “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.”
Carter won the Democratic nomination and got elected. He even carried Kentucky.
Fineman’s optimism aside, most other district Democrats probably would concede, even publicly, that Marshall will have a tough time carrying the First, arguably the reddest congressional district in Republican Red Kentucky. But any such doubts don’t seem to be tempering their enthusiasm for Marshall’s candidacy.
At any rate, Marshall declared at Fancy Farm, “When I’m elected to Congress this November, I will be pro-union, pro-farm, pro-public education and pro-choice.”
The Kentucky State AFL-CIO endorsed Marshall. The national AFL-CIO rates Comer one of the most anti-union lawmakers in Washington. The National Education ranks him among the most anti-public education legislators on Capitol Hill.
Comer never misses a chance to burnish his anti-abortion creds. Marshall, who spoke before him, turned the tables on her opponent, making Comer’s “A+ rating from anti-choice organizations” a minus.
Appealing to women, she said that while Comer and the GOP profess “to love small government so much, he sure loves to be in our business. He’s always voted for the government to be in between you and your doctor.”
Marshall pledged to “protect a woman’s right to make her own health care choices.”
Fancy Farm is famous — or infamous, depending on your perspective — for politicians slamming each other from the stump, sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes not.
Marshall chose kinder, gentler jabs, while Comer opted for his customary demagoguery and dissembling.
“We’re running the first competitive campaign that Rep. Comer has had to face since 2015,” she said. “If you all don’t remember what happened that year, he lost to Matt Bevin, which is really saying something.”
Bevin edged Comer by 83 votes in the 2015 GOP gubernatorial primary. He beat Democrat Jack Conway in November, but Democrat Andy Beshear unseated Bevin in 2019. Voters reelected Beshear last year.
The clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives lists Tompkinsville as Comer’s hometown. But he also has a house in Frankfort. GOP gerrymandering in the General Assembly made the state capital part of the First District, which curves under the Second District and stretches more than 300 miles to the Mississippi River.
Marshall, a Frankfort native, nonetheless said she’s glad Comer can “live in his district again.”
Marshall claimed, tongue-in-cheek, that she considered carpooling to Fancy Farm with her fellow Frankfort resident. “But then I remembered he comes down here so infrequently I’m not sure he could find his way. And then I remembered he has such a hard time controlling his committees. I don’t know if I’d trust him to be in charge of getting anybody down here.”
Marshall, who turned 30 in April, had never run for office. But she’s a veteran of three Democratic campaigns, starting in 2014 with Alison Lundergan Grimes’s unsuccessful bid to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell. She also worked for Hillary Clinton, who came up short against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race and, a year later, was a campaign staffer for Ralph Northam, when he was elected governor of Virginia.
Marshall told the Fancy Farm throng she was running for Congress as “a proud mother to my five-year-old son Theodore.” She said she aimed to continue the work of Gov. Beshear.
In addition to stressing that she’s pro-choice, Marshall proposed “it is time to bring back more jobs to the district, support our farmers, revitalize our small towns.”
According to Marshall, “Jamie Comer has consistently voted against the people of our district. We might be used to seeing his face on TV, but it’s not for helping us.”
She urged the crowd to “retire one of the least effective members of Congress. Let’s let him go back to that home in Frankfort that he so desperately wanted to live in. And let’s send another Democrat to DC to take care of the people of the commonwealth. It is time to have a representative that is working for you instead of working to get his face on Fox News.”
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