Republican Ralph Alvarado and Democrat Zach Dembo debated the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, data centers and healthcare on stage Thursday night for their first and only debate ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
Alvarado, a doctor and former state representative, emphasized his desire to cut taxes and touted his credentials as a means to combat healthcare costs. Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo painted himself as an “independent fighter” who would oppose corruption in Washington D.C. and oppose Trump administration policies he says have raised the cost of living for Americans.
A district that most handicappers had rated a solidly red seat has turned into a battleground with Democrats and Republicans spending millions to pick it up. Publicly available polling has been one-sided so far — only surveys sponsored by Democrats or Dembo himself have been released. Of the Democratic polls that surveyed voters in October, all five show Dembo up by anywhere from 3 to 9 percentage points.
Election predictors may have moved the race to a more competitive rating, but still predict that the district, which voted for Trump by 15 points, leans toward Alvarado.
At the debate, held by Fox56 in Lexington, the candidates heavily deliberated Trump’s signature tax and policy package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — also called H.R. 1. Dembo strongly denounced it while Alvarado says he would have voted for it.
“There's clips of him saying that he opposed H.R. 1, which would have reduced everybody's taxes, which did reduce everybody's taxes in the state,” Alvarado said.
While the act extends previous tax cuts, creates deductions for tips and overtime pay and increases the child tax credit, it also slashed food assistance and Medicaid spending, reducing eligibility and adding more barriers to accessing the social services.
“I like no taxes on tips, like no taxes on overtime, like no taxes on Social Security. If those were standalone measures, I would be in favor,” Dembo said. “But I will never vote to shutter our rural hospitals. I will never vote to kick folks off of the food benefits that they were receiving, and I will never vote to be a toady for the ultra wealthy and the millionaires and billionaires to give them tax breaks when they're already doing fine.”
The two also argued over how to relieve the pressure on American’s budgets, with Alvarado calling primarily to continue cutting taxes while Dembo called to repeal Trump-era policies like widespread tariffs.
Alvarado also promoted his medical credentials and said he would use his “expertise to fix healthcare.” He called for less rules around federal funding, giving states leeway to make healthcare investments as they choose.
“I think the state can do a lot more than a federal dollar with less strings attached. States can do much more. Hawaii will handle it differently than Montana, than Kentucky, than Maine,” Alvarado said.
Dembo did not say he supports “healthcare for all,” but said he’s on record supporting a “public option” to ensure affordable care.
“Too many Central Kentuckians are sick because they're poor, or poor because they're sick. We should not have that in the richest country in the world,” Dembo said.
The two candidates sparred over how they would handle Trump’s tariffs. Dembo said unequivocally that Congress needs to exercise its authority by rejecting the president’s broad tariffs and only supporting specific, targeted levies.
“The reason we're paying $1,000 more per household and the cost is through the roof is because Congress hasn't been doing their job,” Dembo said. “If they just exercise that power, they can make sure the tariffs that make sense go through, and the rest of them jacking up costs on us in Central Kentucky don’t.”
Meanwhile, Alvarado said he was unable to answer whether Congress should have to approve “broad new presidential tariffs within 60 days.”
“Some of them are involved with sanctions on particular countries that you have to have in place. Other times, it's for unfair trade deals that can be in place,” Alvarado said. “So sometimes these are valid uses for tariffs.”
When asked on which issues the candidates would break with their parties, Dembo said he believes President Joe Biden did a poor job shoring up the U.S. border with Mexico.
“I thought it was ridiculous that Biden did not secure the southern border,” Dembo said. “We can't have a safe country without secure borders. I don't know if these people in Congress feel that way or not, but I'll tell you, anyone who thinks we don't need a secure southern border, I'm going to have a problem with.”
Alvarado said he wants the president to end the war in Iran — a war he initially supported full-throatedly.
“I think we need to end the war in Iran. It’s what we need to do right now, and that's the thing I'm going to break on,” Alvarado said.
Accusations on data centers, donors, pardons fly wild
Alvarado repeatedly accused Dembo of accepting money from Reid Hoffman, a venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn who has now been closely tied with notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Hoffman did not directly donate to Dembo’s campaign, but to Kentuckians Not Corruption, a PAC created to support Dembo but which he cannot legally collaborate with.
“Reid Hoffman sees something in him that other people maybe don't see to invest $500,000 in a campaign,” Alvarado said.
Alvarado was also the beneficiary of ad spending by PACs that were funded by people linked in the Epstein files, such as Elon Musk and Trump, whose endorsement Alvarado trumpeted in his Republican primary campaign.
Dembo defended himself, saying he has never met or talked to Hoffman and can not coordinate with the PAC that Hoffman donated to. Alvarado also trashed Dembo for accepting fundraising help from former Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, who also served as Gov. Andy Beshear’s transportation secretary, because of his connections to data center development.
After the debate, Dembo told reporters he is proud to have Gray’s endorsement.
“I know him as a public servant. I don't know anything about what Mr. Alvarado is talking about, and frankly, given his own clear financial interests in the data center industry, I don't know that he's a reliable narrator on that,” Dembo said.
Dembo lobbed some of his own accusations, saying Alvarado has substantial stock invested in companies tied to data centers and therefore can’t be impartial.
“We need a Congress who's going to make sure they hold these massive trillion-dollar companies accountable, not someone who's hoping he gets a bump in his stocks if they do well,” Dembo said.
Alvarado’s campaign advisor Tim Murtaugh, who has previously served on Trump’s presidential campaigns, spoke with the press after the debate instead of Alvarado. He told reporters that “someone selects his investments for him” and that Alvarado supports a ban on stock trading for members of Congress.
“In fact, in the absence of a ban, he will have a self-imposed ban. He will not buy or sell stocks as long as he is a member of Congress,” Murtaugh said, before pivoting again to focus on Hoffman’s donation.
During the debate, Alvarado accused Dembo of not standing up against the Biden administration while he was serving as U.S. attorney when Biden issued controversial pardons that Alvarado characterized as “thousands of pardons to people who were criminals, to murderers, to people who were traffickers.”
Dembo said that his role as a prosecutor had nothing to do with presidential pardons.
“I can't believe that my opponent brought up the term ‘pardon’ when he was Matt Bevin's running mate,” Dembo said. “He stood silently by after Bevin pardoned criminals, kidnappers, rapists, and murderers, and never said a word against it until it was politically expedient.”
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Early voting in Kentucky begins Thursday, Oct. 29 and runs through Saturday.
