By Chad Lampe
Frankfort, KY – Republican 1st district Kentucky Congressman Ed Whitfield prefers a republican state senator's plan for drawing new congressional districts. Whitfield's District Director Michael Pape says Senator Damon Thayer's plan calls for the least disruption among all districts while Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo's plan would make major changes specifically to the 1st district. Stumbo's plan removes more rural counties from the 1st district and takes Daviess County including the city of Owensboro from the 2nd to the 1st district. Pape says, to Congressman Whitfield new boundaries shouldn't be about partisan politics, but rather the constituents.
"Communities get used to being represented by a certain congressional district boundary, if they tried to take 6 or so counties away from the first district and move them to another district I think you'd find a lot of the local officials and folks that deal with congress on any given day would say, "we kind of like working with Congressman Whitfield, we know him we're used to working with him. "
Currently the 1st district's voter makeup is more than 60% democratic, but Whitfield has consistently won by large margins. Whitfield's last two races though haven't seen a strong Democratic challenger. Daviess County would add a more urban democrat voting block to the 1st District. 2nd District Congressman Brett Guthrie has said publicly he would like to keep Daviess County in his district. State legislators will take up the redistricting issue in the upcoming general assembly.