Four Senate seats, eleven days out: what the new money changed

LOUISVILLE — On September 23 I pulled every precinct in the four Senate districts on Jefferson County's ballot and said two of them, the 6th and the 36th, were live, and that the money in them told opposite stories. The 60-day reports had just landed then. The 30-day reports were due October 13, cover through October 4, and are now on the Registry's site, so this is the update I promised: who raised what since the last report, who spent it, and what each campaign had in the bank with a month to go. Read the original first if you haven't; the precinct maps have not changed. The money has.

One housekeeping note before the numbers. Under the reporting calendar Kentucky adopted in 2025, the pre-election filings are the 60-day, the 30-day and the 15-day, and nothing else; if you have seen another name for the second one, including in an earlier piece of mine, it means this one. The 15-day covers through October 19 and is due October 28. That is the last report before the vote, and I will run this once more when it posts.

District 36: the air war started, and the ratio collapsed. On September 4, Julie Raque Adams had $451,736 on hand and Sarah Cole McIntosh had $28,471. Sixteen to one. I wrote that it did not change the precinct map but it decided what the last six weeks would look like in the mailbox.

They look like this. Between September 5 and October 4, Adams spent $377,934, which is 84 percent of what she started the period with. The Registry lists fourteen payments. Three of them, all to a firm called Medium Buying, total $252,877 for media. Two to Art and Copy Partners total $78,139 for mail and advertising. Two more, to SRG and El Toro, total $41,500 for digital. That is $372,516 of the $377,934 on television, mail and screens, and $5,418 on everything else, including $3,400 of campaign help and $32 of snacks for volunteers. She raised $101,200 in the same month, $64,150 from individuals, $31,550 from PACs, $5,500 from other candidates' committees, and, for the second report in a row, not one dollar in unitemized small contributions. She ended the period with $175,002.

McIntosh raised $20,977: $5,225 itemized from individuals, $752 from twenty small donors, and $15,000 from the Kentucky Senate Democratic Caucus Campaign Committee on October 2, the caucus's second $15,000 to her this cycle. She spent $2,237, most of it on printing. She ended with $47,211.

So the ratio went from sixteen to one to under four to one, and the honest version of that number is that it means the opposite of what it looks like. The gap did not close because McIntosh caught up. It closed because Adams converted $378,000 of cash into airtime and mail that has already landed in the district. A dollar in the bank on October 4 is a dollar a campaign has not used yet; a dollar spent on television in September is a dollar that has already done whatever it is going to do. Adams still has $175,002 to spend in the last month, and she has already spent, in one month, nearly seven times what McIntosh has raised in the whole campaign.

What that buys is the question. In September I said this race was thirty precincts and 27,660 votes, Trump by 1,997 and Beshear by 2,479, and that a volunteer operation could cover it. Nothing in these reports changes that arithmetic. A quarter-million dollars of broadcast in the Louisville market does not reach thirty precincts in the east end any more efficiently than it reaches Shively, and the mail is the only line on Adams's report that goes to specific doors. McIntosh's report, meanwhile, looks like a field campaign on paper: printing, a parade, a voter-contact tool, and the caucus check that keeps the lights on. The 36th is still a field race or it isn't a race. It is just now a field race being run under $370,000 of someone else's advertising.

District 6: the even race tilted, by one check and one month. On September 4, Christian Furman had out-raised Lindsey Tichenor $153,609 to $101,945 and they were within $10,000 on hand, $77,712 to $87,467. I called that an even race financially, against a sitting senator, in Oldham County.

In the month since, Tichenor raised $35,926 and Furman raised $24,149, and $15,000 of Furman's was the same Senate Democratic Caucus check McIntosh got, dated September 10. Strip the caucus money out and Furman's month nets to $9,149: $10,812 itemized from individuals, $1,687 from 29 small donors, $150 in cash, $1,500 from one PAC, less a $5,000 reduction in "other receipts" that the report attributes to the candidate herself. Tichenor's $35,926 was $25,526 itemized, $9,200 from PACs, $1,000 from a party executive committee and $200 anonymous. Still no small-dollar line on Tichenor's report, two filings in a row.

Spending stayed the shape it was. Furman spent $16,914: organizing help, printing, postage, newspaper ads, a canoe rental for a community event. Tichenor spent $10,809: signs, palm cards, a creative shop. Over the whole campaign Furman has now spent $92,811 to Tichenor's $25,287, nearly four to one, which is still what a challenger knocking doors looks like against an incumbent who has not had to.

The cash line moved, though. Tichenor ended the period with $112,584. Furman ended with $84,947, and lists $5,878 in debts and obligations. The $10,000 gap is now $27,637. Tichenor also filed her report at 11:36 the morning after it was due, which the Registry notes and I will too.

Here is the read. Furman's campaign has been spending as it goes, which is the right way to run a challenger race in a district where eighteen Oldham precincts decide it, and the price of spending as you go is that your bank balance in October looks worse than your opponent's. Tichenor's balance looks better because she has done less with it. Whether $112,584 can buy back eighteen precincts in eleven days against a candidate who has been at their doors since June is the whole question in the 6th, and the report cannot answer it. It can tell you Tichenor's donors are PACs and itemized givers and Furman's include 29 people who gave a hundred dollars or less in a month. One of those is a campaign. The other is a balance sheet.

The caucus did the one thing it could. The Kentucky Senate Democratic Caucus gave $15,000 to Furman on September 10 and $15,000 to McIntosh on October 2, on top of a first $15,000 to McIntosh earlier in the cycle. That is $45,000 across the only two Senate seats in Louisville a Democrat can take this year, and it is the contribution limit doing exactly what it is supposed to do: the caucus cannot make McIntosh's race even and it did not try. It bought her a month of printing and it bought Furman a mail piece. In a chamber where Democrats hold six of 38 seats, that is where the money goes, and there is not more of it.

The other two. Karen Berg raised $11,705 in the 26th, $9,350 of it from PACs including the teachers' PAC and the bankers', spent nothing, and has $37,324. Everett Corley, her opponent, has filed a statement of spending intent and no report, which the Registry allows for a campaign under the reporting threshold; his line is zero. Mike Nemes raised $2,506 in the 38th, spent $250, and has $65,652 against nobody. Across the four seats, six campaigns reported nearly $523,000 on hand between them on October 4, and $175,002 of it, a third, belongs to one incumbent in one district, after she spent $378,000.

The 36th went from sixteen to one to four to one, and that is bad news for the challenger. A ratio that closes because the incumbent spent is a ratio that has already been delivered to your voters' mailboxes.

What I'm watching. Two numbers, same as before, plus one. The 15-day reports, due October 28, will show whether Adams spends the other $175,000 or banks it, and whether anybody wrote Furman a check that is not from the caucus. Then the precinct turnout, the week after the vote: Democratic rate against Republican rate in the thirty flip precincts of the 36th and the eighteen in Oldham. And now a third: whether $372,516 of television, mail and digital, dropped into a district that voted Beshear by sixteen and Trump by two, moves those thirty precincts at all. If it does, the lesson for 2028 is that the 36th is an air district and the Democrat needs $400,000. If it doesn't, the lesson is the one I wrote in September: those thirty precincts turn on who shows up, and the money was a very expensive way to find that out.

I'll have the 15-day numbers the day they post, and the precincts the week after.

---

Disclosure: I work in Kentucky Democratic politics. I'm not paid by, and don't advise, any candidate named above. All money figures are from the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance's public search: 30-day pre-General reports covering through October 4, 2026, filed October 12 to 14, with Berg's figures from her October 19 amendment, and the 60-day pre-General reports covering through September 4 for the comparison. Candidate pages: Furman 168542, Tichenor 168568, Berg 169022, Corley 169556, McIntosh 168806, Adams 168121, Nemes 167978. Precinct figures are from the September 23 piece and are unchanged.