KY's Only Democratic Member of Congress Announces Retirement, Gerrymandering Threat Looms: Yarmuth

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- Daily Kos, Oct. 12, 2021. - Ed.

Rep. John Yarmuth, who chairs the powerful budget committee and is Kentucky’s only Democratic member of Congress, announced Tuesday that he would not seek a ninth term next year in the 3rd District. The current version of Yarmuth’s seat, which includes most of Louisville, backed Joe Biden 60-38. Still, legislative Republicans have the power to pass a new gerrymander to make this seat conservative-friendly turf.

This uncertainty about the district’s future didn’t stop state Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey from declaring that he would seek the Democratic nomination, an announcement that came less than 10 minutes after Yarmuth’s. The race already includes state Rep. Attica Scott, a vocal advocate for police accountability and one of the most progressive members of the state legislature, who launched a primary bid against Yarmuth in July.

Yarmuth’s retirement ends a political career that began when he was a Republican. The future congressman came from a wealthy and influential Louisville family, and his father was a fundraiser for Richard Nixon. Yarmuth, who would later say he “always considered myself a Rockefeller Republican,” worked for Jefferson County Judge-Executive Marlow Cook while in college, and he traveled across the state with none other than Mitch McConnell in 1968 to support Cook’s successful Senate bid. Yarmuth would recount that McConnell called him up three years later to ask if he’d take his place on Cook’s Senate staff, which Yarmuth immediately agreed to.

Yarmuth left Capitol Hill following Cook’s 1974 defeat and went on to found and publish a magazine back in Louisville. He remained active in local GOP politics in the ensuing years, including in 1981 when McConnell, who now held Cook’s old job as Jefferson County judge-executive, convinced him to wage an unsuccessful campaign for county commission. Yarmuth, though, drifted from his old party during the Reagan era, saying later he finally switched his registration to Democratic in 1985 after televangelist Jerry Falwell attacked Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Yarmuth spent the next 3 decades active in the Louisville media scene as the publisher of a liberal alternative weekly & frequent TV guest, but national party leaders were not enthusiastic when he decided to run for Congress in 2006 against veteran GOP Rep. Ann Northup...

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/12/2057667/-Kentucky-s-only-Democratic-member-of-Congress-announces-retirement-as-gerrymandering-threat-looms