Mitch McConnell — Republican incumbent

Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. Elected to that position by his Republican colleagues first in 2014 and again in 2016 and 2018, he is only the second Kentuckian to ever serve as Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate.

McConnell has served as the Republican Leader since the 110th Congress. He is the longest-serving Senate Republican Leader in the history of the United States. He previously served in leadership as the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses and as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles.

McConnell has been called “the most conservative leader of either party in the history of the Senate.” He has also earned a reputation as a “master tactician” for permanently locking in critical tax relief for working families and small businesses, and putting in place the most significant spending reduction legislation in a generation.

First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell is Kentucky’s longest-serving senator. That year he was the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democrat and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. On November 4, 2014, he was elected to a record sixth term.

McConnell graduated with honors from the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as student body president.

He also is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association.

Before his election to the Senate, he served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until starting his Senate term on January 3, 1985. He serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees.

He is the father of three grown daughters. He is now married to Elaine Chao, U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

(Source: Mitch McConnell website.)

Amy McGrath — Democrat

Amy McGrath is the youngest of three children of Donald and Marianne McGrath and grew up in Edgewood and graduated from Notre Dame Academy. Her father was a high school English teacher and her mother, a pediatrician and psychiatrist, was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Kentucky medical school.

She wanted to be a fighter pilot at age 13, but women were not yet allowed to serve in military combat roles. She wrote elected officials to ask them to change the law. The law was finally changed and she attended the U.S. Naval Academy and was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer in 1997. She went on to serve 20 years in the Marines. First, she became an F/A-18 weapons systems officer (backseater).

She completed two combat deployments and flew 89 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, targeting al-Qaida and the Taliban. In 2002, as a weapons systems officer, she became the first woman in the Marine Corps to fly a combat mission in an F/A-18. In 2004, she became an F/A-18 pilot and completed a second operational tour deploying to Japan and flying around the Pacific. She completed her third combat deployment in Helmand Province Afghanistan in 2010.

Later, she served as a Congressional Fellow advising a senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on defense and foreign policy and served in the Pentagon as Marine Corps’ liaison to the State Department and other federal agencies. She earned a masters degree in global security from Johns Hopkins University and is a graduate of the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction’s Program for Emerging Leaders at the National Defense University. Her final assignment was as a senior instructor in the Political Science Department at the US Naval Academy. She retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. Her awards include (2) Meritorious Service Medals, (8) Strike Flight Air Medals, Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, and Iraqi and Afghan (2) Campaign medals.

She lives in Georgetown, Kentucky, with husband Erik, a retired Navy pilot, and their three children, Teddy (7), George (5), and Eleanor (3).

(Source: Amy McGrath website.)

Thomas Massie — Republican incumbent

U.S. Representative Thomas Massie entered Congress in November 2012 after serving as Lewis County Judge Executive.

He represents Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District which stretches across Northern Kentucky and 280 miles of the Ohio River.

Massie attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. During school, he invented a technology that enabled people to interact with computers using their sense of touch and leveraged that technology to found SensAble Technologies, Inc., which raised over $32 million of venture capital, created 70 jobs, and obtained 29 patents.

The hardware and software he developed is now used to design automobiles, jewelry, shoes, dental prosthetics, and even reconstructive implants for wounded soldiers.

In Congress, Thomas serves on two committees: the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure and the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure has jurisdiction over roads, bridges, mass transit, railroads, aviation, maritime and waterborne transit. Thomas’s selection to the Oversight and Reform Committee puts him in a position to hold the federal government accountable to taxpayers.

Thomas lives on a cattle farm in Kentucky with his wife and high school sweetheart, Rhonda, and they have four children.

(Source: Thomas Masse website)

Alexandra Owensby – Democrat

A resident of Fort Thomas, Dr. Alexandra M. Owensby earned her first bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in the Public Relations with a minor in Business. After working in restaurant management, she married and started her family in Florida. She returned home to her roots, where her three children could be raised with the same values she was brought up with.

She put herself through nursing school as a full-time single mother of two, utilizing student loans. While working the night shift to make childcare more affordable, she was able to minimize time away from her children. After graduating and earning her RN Status, Alexandra obtained a position as an ICU nurse. Though still struggling to make ends meet, she was able to make it with assistance from the Children’s Health Insurance Program, due to their zero-dollar co-pays for medicine, dental care and clinic visits.

With her Doctoral Degree in Nursing, she became a Nurse Practitioner in Neurology. She still had overwhelming student loan debt and worked three jobs to remain financially stable.

Her journey through hardship and the American education system has inspired her to run for Congress as Kentucky’s 4th District Representative.

Her story is the spark that moves an average American citizen to ask for the opportunity to lead in a city where most do not. She believes fervently that the role of a Congressional Representative is to promote the voice and the will of the people, through her own.

(Source: Alexandra Owensby website)