In WEKU's Reporter's notebook series, public radio journalists sit down with others in media, policy and more to offer an in-depth analysis of issues for Central and Eastern Kentucky.
Six newcomers were elected to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council on Tuesday, and a new vice mayor was chosen. Mayor Linda Gorton also won her third and final term, beating out first-time candidate and realtor Raquel Carter.
Shepherd Snyder sat down with Adrian Paul Bryant, former city government reporter for the Lexington Herald-Header and CivicLex, to discuss the results and what they could mean for Fayette County.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Snyder: It's good to have you back, Adrian. When we last spoke, we talked about the mayoral race, the incumbent Linda Gorton beating challenger Raquel Carter by about 11,000 votes to secure her third and final term. Just to get started, talk to me about what's interesting about this result to you.
Bryant: I think with this race, and I think this is true of some of the other council races, when we talked last time, we talked about this sort of anti-incumbent sentiment that existed in the nation, and certainly with the nationwide results, that was absolutely true in federal and even state House races in different places throughout the United States. And in Lexington, I'm not going to say that didn't exist because I think there are ways it did, but Gorton won by 56%, which I believe is the lowest percentage she's won a general election with. But that's still fairly comfortable of a win, and I think that there is this – looking at the results in the mayor's race and across different races – there's almost this desire for stability at the local level. There are many reads of these races, but I think that is kind of one of them and that's something that I'm thinking about a lot, that clearly, the majority of voters voted to keep Gorton in, and I think that speaks to some level of satisfaction with how the city is being run under her administration.
Now, granted, again, it was a tighter race for a general election anyway than she's had before, and there are definitely certain precincts – your colleague at Louisville Public Media, Justin Hicks, made a map of all the precincts that Gorton and Carter did the best in. And in the urban core areas of Lexington, a lot of downtown, north side, some of the east side and a lot of the precincts immediately outside New Circle Road, which have a lot of apartment complexes on them, Carter did better than Gorton. I'm not going to say there's an urban-rural divide between, you know, how fully the ballots were cast because there are definitely urban pockets where Gorton did very well.
But yeah, obviously, Carter ran the most competitive mayor’s race Gorton has faced, but it's still, for one reason or another, the voters were just not ready for change.
Snyder: Going down to council races, at-large council member James Brown is taking over as vice mayor from fellow at large member Dan Wu. He (Wu) still got reelected to his at-large seat. How unique is that situation, in terms of one at-large council member taking over as vice mayor from another at-large council member? Why do you think that result happened? I'm curious.
Bryant: In terms of how unique it is, it's very unique, and to my knowledge, it's not happened since the merged government was founded in the late 70s in Lexington. I've only been able to find really great election results going back to 1996, and it’s certainly not happened in or since 1996, that a sitting vice mayor was demoted, so to speak, from being the vice mayor to just being a general at-large council member.
I think there are a lot of theories as to why that happened. Vice mayor Dan Wu, soon to be former vice mayor Dan Wu, was elected in 2022 and was, I think, a surprise to a lot of people, probably including himself, that he won, that he became the vice mayor. That was his first ever elected office and I think there were a lot of really, really high expectations on him to be this extremely progressive change agent for Lexington, and I'm not going to say that he wasn't that. But there are certainly a lot of factions of the city that seem to be really frustrated with him over his last four years.
There are very, very progressive voters in Lexington who were frustrated with him for not speaking out harshly enough against the violence in Gaza soon after Oct. 7, when those attacks happened, and there were a lot of people coming to city council meetings demanding that the city pass a resolution condemning the violence in Gaza. There were a lot of people then who were mad at Vice Mayor Wu for not being forceful enough in his rhetoric about that situation. And there are a lot of progressive people who are also frustrated with him for his previous support for Flock cameras. He's also supported a lot of the controversial student housing developments happening around downtown and campus, and, from a progressive angle, there are some people who are frustrated with that because they see it as selling the city out to corporate out-of-state developers. But then there are also some non-progressive voters who have been mad at him for supporting those developments because they are historic preservationists or they simply don't want a lot of high density development in Lexington.
And he has stuck by his principles and has articulated those over the last four years. But I think there's clearly a segment of voters who have been frustrated with him for those stances. I think also, I was really interested in, he posted a lot of videos on social media during his reelection campaign that were pretty policy-heavy, and they were very thoughtful and articulated his stances well. They're very concrete in a way that you don't see a lot of other elected officials doing when they're talking about issues in reelection campaigns, and I think for reporters like us, that's a great thing because we know, hard and fast, where the candidate lies, what they have done, what they're going to do. And I think that's a good thing for voters too. But there's also plenty of campaign or communication strategists who would say that when you get really specific like that, it can turn some voters off, or can just create some kind of tension.
I think in terms of the James Brown of it all, he's been in Lexington politics for a decade and has remained very popular. It's interesting, he's a realtor, and I think a lot of people don't know that, and he is pretty closely affiliated with, frankly, a lot of the same groups that Raquel Carter was affiliated with. Council member Brown works closely with the chamber of commerce and the building community. He got the endorsement from the Builders Industrial Association and the local realtors’ PAC, and has always been a pretty pro-business, pro-economic development candidate. But he also has, whenever there's been a controversial development proposal in any neighborhood around town, and particularly historically Black neighborhoods, but also including some of the developments on Maxwell Street and High Street that are the controversial student housing projects that – the business world that he's pretty tied to, they typically support those projects – but he's voted against them, and he's walked this tightrope in different factions of the city and sort of staying on everybody's good side. I'm certainly not saying that he doesn't have principles, or I don't want it to sound like that. But he can kind of be everything to everybody in a way, while sort of having his own particular niche and lane carved out that, I think, was an opportunity for him to be able to claim the vice mayor seat from current vice mayor Dan Wu.
Snyder: So when we last spoke, we talked about issues like housing and development, and data centers and Flock cameras, and these top of mind issues that have been in city council for the past year or a couple years. With the makeup of this new council, what moves do you think they could make on things like housing, or Flock or data centers? What do you think is going to be top of mind for this particular council once they get into office?
Bryant: I'm really interested to see how the Flock cameras in particular play out because Mayor Linda Gorton is still in place, and she's been pro-Flock camera for the entire time since we've had them as a city. And she's created this external review panel to sort of look at them and see what policies could be changed, or if there needs to be a different vendor for the same types of technology, but is still a fundamentally pro-Flock camera person. James Brown is vice mayor, has voted for flock cameras in the past, and Dan Wu did, as well. So they're both softly pro-Flock camera people, anyway. Certainly, the top leaders of the city clearly were challenged on this issue in big ways, but they've won reelection in some form or fashion, and so the ideology around Flock cameras at the top isn't changing, at least in terms of who's in the office. Now, of course, candidates can change their mind about anything or have their perspectives evolve.
I think, looking at some of the like other races, in District Four in particular, Brenda Monarrez has always spoken out as a pro-police, pro-public safety person, and voted for Flock cameras whenever they're brought on in different stages of contracts in 2023.
I guess what I'm saying is that the perspectives in terms of the people who are coming onto council don't seem to be fundamentally different than the previous council. Now, I could be wrong about that, because again, you never know. But Flock cameras were certainly a big issue in the election, but it wasn't enough to really shake up the elected officials who had a record on voting on flock cameras.
When it comes to housing, it's really hard to know. When you look at someone like the incoming Fifth District council member Stephanie Hoelscher, who was running unopposed in this election – well, that was a late development, she had an opponent who dropped out in late September or early October. Hoelscher has talked a lot about the sort of Strong Towns idea. Strong Towns is a national advocacy organization that has chapters in different cities, including Lexington. And their perspective on development is that, going all out and building super tall apartment complexes all at once in different neighborhoods is very disruptive. But changing planning and zoning laws to allow for, for example, something like an eight-plex apartment building, like something that you see all over Ashland and Chevy Chase and other parts of the historic urban core of Lexington, allowing things like that to be built all over the place in any city, and allowing that kind of incremental development is the best way to go about things. She's coming from very much that perspective.
Griffin Van Meter, who's coming into the third council district, has also used similar rhetoric, but has also talked about student housing as in the sort of District 3 area, which is his district on Maxwell and High Street, as infill. I think he's maybe a little bit more in sort of the Dan Wu camp of, we have to build high density even if it means sacrificing some things, but he's going to have to tow a line in that district.
Another district council member who's coming in, who's going to have a really fascinating perspective on this, is Chris Woodall. He did not have an opponent in this race. He's coming into the 10th district, which was an open seat. He used to be the head of long-range planning for the city, but he resigned from his job in 2023 soon after the urban service boundary expansion was adopted by the council, and now he's coming in to be a council member, and I think he's going to have a very informed perspective on these decisions, and the ideology he's going to come from, like how that manifests as a council member versus being a staff planner, is going to be interesting to watch.
