Democrats Just Won a Republican Seat in a District That Trump Won by 49 Points

Linda Belcher is the new state representative for Kentucky’s 49th District.

Democrat Linda Belcher, left, won the Kentucky House of Representatives seat representing the 49th District. Here, she speaks with a supporter during a rally, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, in Shepherdsville, Ky. Timothy D. Easley/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Voters in Bullitt County, a Kentucky district south of Louisville that went heavily for Trump in 2016, just elected a Democrat to fill a House seat left vacant by a legislator who committed suicide amid allegations of sexual assault.

On Tuesday night, Linda Belcher beat Republican Rebecca Johnson by an almost 37-point margin—an 86-point swing from Trump’s victory. The House seat that represents the state’s 49th District has been vacant since December, when Republican Rep. Dan Johnson committed suicide after the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published a story in which Johnson was accused of molesting a 17-year-old girl at the church where he served as pastor. (Johnson denied the allegations and initially refused to step down, even without the support of Republican leadership in Kentucky.)

The day after his death, his widow, Rebecca Johnson, announced her candidacy for the seat. She faced off against Belcher, a former teacher and school administrator who had previously held the seat under strikingly similar circumstances: Belcher ran for the post after her husband, Rep. Larry Belcher, died in a car crash in 2008.

Although Trump won by a 49-point margin in 2016, the district isn’t reliably red—Democrats have held the state House seat for six of the last 10 years, and the last three elections have been won by a margin of six points or fewer. Johnson was elected to the seat in November 2016. He beat then-incumbent Belcher by less than one point by riding the red wave that gave Republicans control of Kentucky’s state House for the first time in nearly a century. 

The race has been one of several special elections held as a result of #MeToo movement, which has led to resignations of men accused of sexual misconduct in statehouses across the country. As in states facing similar vacanies, Kentucky Democrats poured their resources into KY-49 and helped Belcher raise four times as much money as Johnson. While campaigning, Belcher made little mention of the circumstances under which she sought elected office. Johnson denounced the allegations against her husband as “high-tech lynchings based on lies and half-truths.”

Belcher’s win comes a week after Democrats captured a seat in Florida’s state House, which brings the grand total of seats flipped from red to blue to 37 since Trump took office. While additional GOP victories in Minnesota, Georgia, and Oklahoma may have suggested a slowing momentum for the blue wave, Belcher’s victory—alongside a modest 1.3-point gain in the generic ballot poll—restores some confidence among Democrats looking for a strong showing in the 2018 midterm elections.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate