Dr. Dana Edwards, Republican candidate for Congress in Kentucky’s 5th District
Renee Shaw: Good evening, welcome to Kentucky Tonight. I’m Renee Shaw, thank you so much for joining us. The May 21st Kentucky primary is two weeks from tomorrow. Voters will pick Republican and Democratic nominees for the state House and state Senate. There are several contested primaries for the U.S. House. We’re joined tonight by Dr. Dana Edwards, a Republican candidate in the 5th Congressional District. Congressman Hal Rogers declined our invitation to appear. The other 5th District candidates did not meet our criteria. We do want to hear from you tonight. You can send us your questions and comments by X, formerly Twitter at K-Y-Tonight-KET. Send an email to K-Y-Tonight-at-KET-dot-o-r-g, or use the webform at KET-dot-o-r-g-slash-ky-tonight, or you can simply give us a call at 1-800-494-7605. Well, welcome, Mr. Edwards, thank you for being here.
Dana Edwards: Thank you so much, Renee, for having me. It’s a great honor to be here. Thank you.
Shaw: Pleasure. So, let’s begin by you telling the viewers and the voters in the 5th Congressional District a little bit about your background and why you’re seeking the Republican nomination in the 5th Congressional District.
Edwards: Absolutely.1998, my wife and I moved to Clay County to start a private surgical practice. Now we’re here 26 years later and there is no economic growth in Clay County. There are no new jobs, no new American companies. We have a nice, flat, developed industrial site that’s totally empty. And then look at 28 of our 33 counties in our district, going east from Laurel County to Pike, south to McCreary, they’re in the same situation. I’ve visited all those counties, I’ve talked to those judge-executives and the sheriffs, and they have the same problem. And in fact, it’s a worsening condition than it was 26 years or even 42 years ago in that there’s decrease in census, people can’t find jobs, decreasing tax base. Sheriff’s trying to hire deputies at $13 an hour because that’s all the budget can allow them to do. And for me to see that, I have to ask the question why? I’m not a politician, I am an American citizen, but I had to ask the question why? Why are we, why is our district, Kentucky’s 5th, still the second-most impoverished district in America? Why is my district still having the greatest percentage of people below the poverty level? Why is my district still having the greater percentage of people on federal assistance programs. Why is my district still having the greatest percentage of people on federally funded health insurance plans like Medicaid and Medicare? Why is my district having the greatest percentage of tobacco abuse, heart disease, lung disease, cancer, early death? All of these negatives and we could go on and on, that nothing has changed in 42 years, and certainly in the last 26 years. So, I said, ok, why? Because we don’t have representation. We don’t have constitutional representation.
Shaw: This is your first time running for elected office, correct?
Edwards: It is. It is.
Shaw: And, and so talk to us about, you asked a lot of questions and maybe a lot of other viewers and voters would ask about the 5th Congressional District. What, what are your answers to them and how do they differentiate you from the Republican incumbent, who’s been in office since 1981.
Edwards: Right. I think that the first thing they ask me is why am I running, which we’ve just answered because there are problems I see that haven’t been solved that can be solved. And the issues come down to really, economic, economic, and economic. So what, what people are wanting from me is, is what is my plan. How am I going to change the situation that we just talked about.
Shaw: And how would you do that, sir?
Edwards: Well, I think that the first and foremost is we have to have a published, five-year economic development, which has never happened. Nobody’s ever gotten to (it), the governor’s office, (Sen.) Rand Paul, (Sen.) Mitch McConnell, (Rep.) Hal Rogers, there’s never done that. We have to have a economic development plan so that we know how are we going to recruit new American companies to come in? How are we going to expand our tourism dollars to capture the billions of tourism dollars that we’re not enjoying. How are we going to expand the 700,000-acre Daniel Boone National Forest, utilizing it to its capacity so we can capture some of those tourism dollars. Because this is the issue in my, in my district, eastern Kentucky is, there’s almost fatalistic idea or, you know, belief that since coal left, that nothing’s going to change in eastern Kentucky. That we’re never going to have the affluence that the rest of America has. I think that’s a bald-face lie.
Shaw: And you say on your website that you would bring back the coal industry. How would you do that, sir?
Edwards: Bringing back the coal industry is to the level that it was decades ago is impossible. But we can bring back coal to folks and it’s having more clean coal, do things different than the way it was done back when it was affluent. It will be a small part of the economic development plan, there’s just no way around it. That I’ve looked at the coal burning facilities that produce electricity that are obsolete, the machinery can’t even be replaced. So, trying to build new coal-burning plants is impossible, economically impossible. But we do need to continue to have some coal and it’s true here, because you know we’re importing coal from foreign countries.
Shaw: On your website you also say that you’re pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, and pro-medical freedom. What does pro-medical freedom mean? Is that about vaccines, or masks, or other mitigation measures? Or is it even about the right to refuse health care based on deeply held-religious beliefs.
Edwards: Yes, all of that, Renee, I think. It’s also, it’s, it’s about that the government should not have the, the authority to tell us individual citizens what we can do with our body, and that includes vaccinations. If they, if they make a record now of what vaccines you have, they can use that – they meaning the government – to screen you for certain jobs in the federal government, certain, certain ways of preventing you from having jobs. That, that, that is all, just, that’s un-American. You don’t need to be doing that. It also goes down in the HIPAA law. The HIPAA law that’s supposed to protect our privacy in medical information is really not protecting us because industries, uh non-medical people, uh governmental agencies are using that information in ways they can screen us and see what, what, what we’re doing, where we’re spending our money. Insurance companies have that data. That’s not shared data, and to make it private. That’s being shared with lots of companies that are not in our best interest for our health care.
Shaw: You say that you’re pro-life, but in your description of pro-medical freedom, would your pro-medical freedom philosophy apply to abortion access under certain circumstances.
Edwards: Abortion access, uh, first of all, I believe is a state issue. That’s that first thing, it’s not a federal issue. The federal government has no business (regulating) when a woman or if a woman can have an abortion. But that federal, that medical freedom I think should, I, you know, I, I believe that a woman has a right if she wants to have an abortion, she’d have the legal right to have an abortion. The, the issue comes in is do I believe that she should? The moral issue is no, I don’t think she should, but she has the legal right and the state should provide some sort of legal protection for her to be able to have an abortion...
Shaw: So many people, Dr. Edwards, would say that doesn’t make you pro-life.
Edwards: Well, I am pro-life in the sense that I believe that life begins at conception. That that is God’s plan, and to honor God, we, we should not have an abortion. But the reality of life is women find themselves in situations that make them think about abortion being the best solution. It’s not, but it comes down to my, my feelings are it’s not about being against abortion, it’s about being for the woman and to come to her and explain to her in your situation you do have options besides abortion. But if she wants abortion, I think that that’s her legal right, that as a citizen of America, that’s a freedom that she should have. I don’t think she should do it and I think there are better alternatives to that situation.
Shaw: Congressman Hal Rogers, making a pivot now to a different topic, was the only one of Kentucky’s Congressmen of the 147 total in Washington to vote to overturn the 2020 election. Is that a vote of Rogers’ that you approve? Would you have voted the same had you been in office at the same time.
Edwards: I think that election integrity is an issue in this country. That came about very clearly, but to reverse the choice of the people, I did, I would not have voted for that even though I know and the evidence shows that was some election integrity issues, that still the people voted. That’s what you go with, whether you like, whether you don’t, doesn’t matter. They have spoken. That’s the way...
Shaw: So, you believe that President Joe Biden was duly and fairly elected president of the United States.
Edwards: I believe that Joe Biden was duly elected the president, but I do think that, again, there were issues in how that election votes happened and were counted. However, yes, I do believe that he is the duly elected president.
Shaw: Do you consider yourself a Trump Republican?
Edwards: I consider myself a Trump Republican in the sense that I believe that Mr. Trump is our best option to, to lead us into the solution to the problems that we find, uh, the problems that we’re facing as a nation. That, that those issues, you know, we could talk all night about, but the basic thing is I do think Trump is the best solution for us in, in this time of, of, of need in this country. We are in so much need, so many things are going on that’s not constitutional that we’ve got, we’ve got to solve.
Shaw: Congressman Rogers, the incumbent, has voted with Trump, when he was president, 96 percent of the time. He voted against Trumps’ impeachment. If voters are looking for a pro-Trump representative in Washington, don’t they already have it in Hal Rogers?
Edwards: Well, they do have it in Hal Rogers. But I also, you’re going to have to bring out the fact that Hal Rogers also voted to approve the budget of Joe Biden. He’s approved the increase the national debt. He’s approved, you now, agreed to approve the budget that raises our national debt to $36 trillion. So, I look at it as, yes, if, if Hal Rogers and I share one thing, it would be that we both support Trump. But then the differences then totally go at that point and diverge continuously, and that’s what my campaign has been about. It’s not about attacking Hal, but about saying this is the difference between me and Hal. This is how I see we can solve our economic problems. This is how I think we’re being unconstitutionally (represented) in Congress. But we do share a support of Trump, that is correct.
Shaw: Do you share support of the current House Speaker, Mike Johnson? There is a move by Congressman, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and also Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of the 4th Congressional District to oust him, although there are talks continuing that could thwart that plan. Where do you stand on that issue, sir?
Edwards: Uh, I, I think that the House Speaker, Mr. Mike Johnson, has got some issues that do raise concern. He did vote again with the Democrats on this huge budget. He’s voted this $95 billion to be sent again in an aid package to both Israel and Ukraine. These are the issues that raise the national debt, that continue to do things that does make national debt go up. It’s already at $36 trillion. It’s predicted to be at $50 trillion by 2030 if we don’t have a Congressional change.
Shaw: So, would you have voted against that $95 billion foreign aid package that went to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and other hotspots?
Edwards: I would not have voted for that package as it was presented, no, because I don’t believe, I believe that the problem, one of the problems we have in America is the fact that we’re not funding the protection of our own border. We’re sending money to protect a foreign border, and I think that that has to be viewed as really something very serious because that’s a deviation from the Constitution where in the preamble to the Constitution it says we provide for the common defense, not the foreign defense of other nations. So, I’m not saying that I would’ve voted to totally cut off aid to Israel, who’s a huge ally of ours, or to Ukraine, but $95 billion when we’ve already spent, what, $116 billion, that, that, and we’re, and we’re $36 trillion in debt? I mean somewhere along the line we’ve got to stop this.
Shaw: Thank you, Dr. Edwards, for being here this evening. We appreciate your participation.
Edwards: Thank you so much again for having me.
Shauna Rudd, Democratic candidate for Congress in Kentucky’s 6th District
Renee Shaw: Thank you for staying with us on Kentucky Tonight. We’re now joined by Shauna Rudd, a Democratic candidate in the 6th Congressional District. The other candidates in this race did not meet our criteria to appear. You can still send your questions and comments by X, formerly Twitter, at KY-Tonight-KET. Send an email to K-Y-Tonight-at-KET-dot-o-r-g. Use the webform at KET-dot-o-r-g-slash-KY-tonight, or call us at 1-800-494-7605. Welcome, Miss Rudd. Thank you for being here.
Shauna Rudd: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Shaw: By way of introduction, tell the viewers and the voters of the 6th Congressional District a little bit about your background and why you want to serve in Washington.
Rudd: A little about my background? Well, it all started when I was born in 19.... I’m kidding.
Shaw: (laughs)
Rudd: Uh, I have been a resident here in the 6th District for about 12 years. I was raised in Jackson, Ky., in Breathitt County. Then whenever I was 18, I left, went to school at EKU, got my masters in social work. Uh, then I went to the University of Kentucky, got my, sorry, got my bachelor’s at EKU, and then I went on to the University of Kentucky to get my masters. And I’ve done social work in this district for several years. I think of the 16 counties in this district, I’ve done social work in 10 of them. So that’s a little bit of my background on this. Uh...
Shaw: Why are you running for office, and this one in particular?
Rudd: There’s a lot of reasons. Uh, it really started about seven months ago whenever the genocide in Palestine began. Every day I called my representatives. I called (Rep.) Andy Barr. I called (Sen.) Mitch McConnell. I called (Rep.) Hal Rogers, even though he’s not my congressman. I called (Rep.) Thomas Massie a few times, even though he’s not my congressman. And what I found was specifically with Andy Barr, a lot of his staffers were very nice to me. But there were times that, you know, people refused to repeat my message back to me, or there were a few times I got hung up on. And I had started a series on TikTok, sort of a how to call your representative series. It really started as an educational sort of tutorial, but what I found and what people who have watched these videos found was like, wow, this really, like doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem like these things are getting escalated and it doesn’t seem like they’re taking this caller seriously. And in December I kind of had this mindset that if you are not going to listen to me or represent me, you know, if you’re not even receiving your messages from your constituents, what I’m going to do is run against you for Congress and win. And so, I filed to run in December. I had no campaign manager, no treasurer, and since then, these past five months, it’s really came together and people have found me.
Shaw: Let me ask you about, uh, your pro-Palestinian views. You consider yourself a pro-Palestinian sympathizer?
Rudd: Yes.
Shaw: Uh, there’s been an interesting social media thread, uh, that has involved you and just today, uh, alleging that you support antisemitic tropes. And so, if you were asked if you support Hamas and violence against Jews, what would your answer be?
Rudd: It would be absolutely not. I do not support any form of violence. And anyone that knows me knows that it, I am, I am in no way antisemitic. I love my Jewish brothers and sisters. If the roles were reversed, if we had 40,000 Israelis dead, I would be just as angry. It, It’s really not about who the people are, it’s about who the genocide is being committed against.
Shaw: Do you support the federal aid package that was approved by Congress, $95 billion worth of aid?
Rudd: No.
Shaw: Why not?
Rudd: Well, uh, I believe there’s about $8 or $9 billion of that was to go to humanitarian aid for Palestine, but there was a much greater number that was supposed to go to fund Israel. And I do find that ironic, we’re including a small amount of aid in a nearly $100 billion package, while at the same time supplying three times that amount in munitions to the country who is carrying it out. So, I just, it is an expensive bill and it seems like it would just do more damage, perpetuate the genocide further.
Shaw: The campus protests that are happening now, we understand at least one university is scaling back their commencement exercises because of the unrest on those campus, campuses. Your thoughts on that: Have they gone to far? Or do you think there’s more to be said, particularly from the pro-Palestinian perspective.
Rudd: Right. Well, I think that students before this, I think students were feeling really frustrated. I think that college students, specifically, has watched the generation ahead of them do the things that they were supposed to do: Go to college, get a job, and they’re seeing that home ownership is difficult. Uh, college is more inaccessible than it’s ever been. We have, I mean there is, it was a nightmare applying for FAFSA this year, from what I understand. So, college students are already frustrated. There’s, they’re feeling like there’s not a lot left for them. And then to see, I mean, we’re nearly at a trillion dollars this year alone in military spending. And these kids, a lot of them don’t have health insurance and can’t afford college. You know I work as a social worker and in a few months, I had two clients in my case load at the same time who were in college and homeless. One was precariously housed, staying with friends. And the other was sleeping in their car, and, so they’re already so upset and then to see all this concern go military spending without these things that they need, I can understand that they’re frustrated. But of course, again, I would never condone any form of violence, but I can, I can see why they feel this way.
Shaw: So, let’s talk about this wealth inequality that you have defined as being a part of your platform on your website. What would you do to tackle so that the college kids that you’ve just spoken about would have a better economic standing when they graduate or even now for that fact?
Rudd: Wall, the thing I would be most excited to see and sign-off on would be a cap to CEO and shareholder disparity, right? What they can make and what they can earn in profits compared to the lowest-page, lowest-paid worker of a company. You know I’ve seen for some of these mega-corporations, we have CEOs that make 100 times, 200 times their lowest paid worker, if not more. And because of the, the humungous gap in that, it makes it hard for people to find meaningful employment, right? So even if you can get a job, it’s not a job that is enough to earn your wage. So that’s the first thing, uh, CEO disparity caps. I like the idea of more progressive tax forms. Let’s tax the rich, let’s look at some of these loopholes that have been used. I call them infinite money hacks, right? You kind of leverage your assets and just, anyway. Uh, so, CEO disparity caps, more progressive tax rates, and I, it’s time we raise the minimum wage. I mean, there’s really...
Shaw: Do you think that your economic views are out of step with the vast majority of constituents in the 6th Congressional District.
Rudd: (sigh) No. I think that sometimes people know that things aren’t working and that they need a change, but it’s really hard. Everything that I just listed, except maybe the CEO disparity caps, are going to come with some negative consequences. I mean everything you do, especially in economics, it’s a cost-benefit analysis. But what we know right now is that there’s so many people in the 6th District, I have worked with people in chronic poverty, experiencing homelessness, substance use issues, and these are people who are working, and these are people who are trying their best, not making enough money to live. And I think a lot of people in this district are starting to see it happen to their children and their grandchildren, if not themselves. Maybe retirement isn’t going as easily as they thought it would be. And I think people in the 6th District are realizing that something needs to change to kind of redistribute the wealth.
Shaw: Can you identify a, a sitting or a former, uh, member either in Congress or in the Senate that your views most align?
Rudd: (sigh) You know, a few months ago, I probably would have said something like, uh, maybe (Rep.) Summer Lee, or in some ways AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) as well, but they really, especially late last year and since then, they’ve really disappointed me with a lot of their voting records. And it starts, you know, who are the PAC people who have...
Shaw: Are they too liberal or too conservative? How would you define their voting records?
Rudd: Well, I wouldn’t say it’s too liberal or conservative but, you know, one of my big concerns has been some of the, uh, bills that went through the House that I feel like are pretty anti-free speech. You know, I’m really like, rights that I really want to maintain the ones that we have. And so, I’m seeing a lot of things come through that are really threatening to people being able to say what they want to say. And AOC has signed-off on those and that was very surprising for me. So, at one point I might have said she was too progressive but now it seems like very inconsistent with her record.
Shaw: How would define your ideological stance politically?
Rudd: That’s a tough question. Uh, people when they hear me talk, they do say that I’m progressive. But, you know, there are other ways that I really identify with, you know, I work with, I work with a lot of people in rural Kentucky. I have a lot of Republicans that I hang out with a lot and, you know, what we find is sometimes we really agree fundamentally. We want the same thing: We want a good life for ourselves and our family, and maybe we disagree on the formula to get there. But, like, once you can realize we want the same things, there’s room for compromise.
Shaw: Let’s talk about gun rights and safety. On your website it says that you advocate for understanding the root causes for gun violence beyond mental illness, emphasizing environmental factors and systemic issues while protecting Second Amendment rights. So, are you in favor of gun control laws, like red flag laws, a more robust background checks system, or restrictions on the purchase of military-style weaponry.
Rudd: Yes, I am in favor of certain forms of gun control, but I do, this is something I have talked about for a long time, way before I started running for Congress is I do take issue with some of the ways that we frame mental health as the predictive factor and the reason for people to commit gun crimes. You know, I wish I had a little bit more time to get in depth, but there’s a lot of research that has been done where the hypothesis is these people who, you know, commit violent gun crimes are mentally ill. They’re obtaining a weapon and committing these crimes because people actually think maybe they’re schizophrenic, bipolar with psychotic features, right, some diagnosis like that. Then a lot of research, it doesn’t support it. You know, one analytical review I cite a lot says that less than 6 percent of the people that they had reviewed met criteria for that diagnosis. And so while there may be, you know, some overlap of people who are mentally ill and who are committing gun crimes, it’s not a predictive factor, right? So it’s not a good way to say this person should be allowed to buy this gun because in my opinion, like the biggest issue with gun control is who are we allowing to have guns and who aren’t we.
Shaw: So, you’d be more in favor of more restrictive gun control laws?
Rudd: Right, like, for and I think we should follow the research, right? What does the research say works? I’ve seen a lot of good, a lot of research that says that 30-day waiting periods prevent a lot, that, uh, suicide prevention places in that sell guns, you know, those are, those things that the research says work.
Shaw: Real quickly, uh, in our last 50-something seconds: Term limits. If elected you have said that you would vow to introduce or support legislation aimed at imposing a maximum of three terms for representatives and two terms for senators. Why?
Rudd: Well, I think we have a lot of career politicians who really, uh, they know who their friends are and we see a lot of the same big donors every time they campaign. Campaigns are a great source of, of money, and with a career politician who has been in this for 10, 15, 20 years, it’s, they have, there is a lot of time for their interests to be bought, and they start to understand how things work, and start to understand how to do things secretly.
Shaw: Well, we’ll have to leave it there. Miss Rudd, thank you so much for participating tonight.
Rudd: Yes.
Shaw: We appreciate it.
Rudd: Thank you so much.
