Special elections set for two House vacancies. One candidate is a Senator’s sister.

The Kentucky House is currently a couple members short. But that won’t last for long, as two special elections have been set for March 19 to fill vacancies in the Greater Louisville area and Western Kentucky.

Former state representative Russell Webber of Bullitt County and former state representative Brandon Reed of LaRue County both left early in the session to take administrator jobs with constitutional officers. Webber is now a deputy treasurer under newly elected Treasurer Mark Metcalf; Reed took a job under Commissioner of Agriculture Jonathan Shell as the Kentucky Office of Agricultural Policy executive director.

Webber’s and Reed’s departures left 98 members, 78 of them being Republicans, in the normally 100-member House.

House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, issued the writs of special election for the seats on Jan. 17.

Webber’s House District 26 replacement is set, as Republican nominee Peyton Griffee is the only candidate to have filed to run for the special election as well as the general election in November.

The special election to replace Reed in House District 24 — which covers Green, Hart and Larue counties — will feature a general election matchup.

The Republican candidate in that district belongs to a familiar family in Frankfort. Courtney Gilbert, who won the Republican nomination process for House District 24, is Sen. Adrienne Southworth’s, R-Lawrenceburg, sister. It wasn’t her first time vying for the seat.

Gilbert was one of a handful of Republican candidates who asked for pricey recounts in the wake of election losses in 2022. That year, she lost to Reed in the GOP primary by 37 percentage points.

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Gilbert is also generally considered a “Liberty” Republican. Candidates aligning under the loosely-organized banner of “Liberty” Republicanism are generally further right than the mainstream of the party on issues like gun control and vaccines. They are also more skeptical of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, one of the state’s most powerful lobbying organizations.

Secretary of State Michael Adams did not speak well of Gilbert’s and others recount efforts, casting them as “conspiracy theorists, whose only goal is to undermine our democracy.”

The district is largely Republican, as former GOP president Donald Trump is estimated by elections website CNalysis to have won the district by 58 percentage points in 2020. All of Reed’s general election wins were in the double digits.

However, special elections can sometimes cut against the political grain. Local Democratic parties have put up Johnny Pennington as their special election nominee, according to the Kentucky Democratic Party; Pennington is also the nominee for the November election.

Gilbert’s nomination for the special election was contested, as Larue County farmer Ryan Bivens also threw his hat in the ring. Gilbert won in a close vote over Bivens.

However, Gilbert can’t hold the seat beyond the rest of the year. The only Republicans to have filed before the filing deadline for the upcoming May primary election are Bivens and Asa Waggoner. The winner of that contest will take on Pennington come November.

Like Gilbert, Waggoner has the backing of some in Republican “Liberty” circles. Southworth was with Waggoner on the day of the filing deadline when he signed up to run for the seat.