Most new members of the Kentucky General Assembly have been there since the beginning of the session started in January.

But that's not the case for a senator elect who's moving from city hall to the state House.

Kasy Chambers Armstrong was just elected to the state Senate in a special election last week.

She joins the upper chamber a few days after the session marks its midpoint.

Learn more about her and tonight's freshman legislator profile.

I am Kasy Chambers Armstrong.

I am the senator for the 19th Senate District.

I have loved serving on Metro Council and I am so proud of the work I've been able to do.

I believe that I have passed policies that will help families in our community.

And so I decided to run for Senate, honestly, because I still believe government can be a force for good, that we can do big things in government, and that by moving from just Louisville to working on behalf of the Commonwealth, I can help more people.

I was born into poverty in eastern Kentucky.

Both of my parents were college students at the time at Berea College, and I spent my childhood in Berea and also in Owsley County, Kentucky, where my family is from.

And so I have seen what it's like to live in very rural Kentucky and the challenges in those communities and what poverty looks like in those areas.

I've also represented one of the most urban areas in the entire state in my metro council district.

And so I believe these divisions we create of urban and rural and the way we try to pit struggling communities against each other because we won't actually put forward the resources to really solve our problems.

Those are the kinds of divisions holding our entire state back.

And so I hope to be a voice that can speak to, you know, the different types of challenges we see across the Commonwealth and how we can come together to solve them.

I believe that a lot of politics is about building relationships.

It's about meeting people on the other side of the aisle and trying to understand where they're coming from and what they care about.

So I'm excited to dive right in and build relationships with folks in my own party, build relationships with folks of different parties and understand the things their communities care about so that we can work together to deliver solutions for all of Kentucky.

I'm concerned about legislation I see moving that is targeting kids, picking on kids.

It's not the direction that we need to be going in.

And as a state, we need to be providing vulnerable kids with resources and support instead of targeting them with legislation.

I think that there are a lot of good things that we can do in this session and in future sessions.

We can fund universal pre-K, we can work on daycare access, We can make sure that when we're thinking about our economy, we are investing in solutions for working families.

These are the sorts of things that when I was on people's doors recently in my election, people said they cared about and they said, Go to Frankfort and deliver those types of things.

And so I believe we can do it.

I'm excited to be a part of it.

I went to Frankfort the very day after my special election and sort of showed up and I saw all of these vehicles and I saw all of these people.

And it hit me that this was a place where you had all of these folks coming from all corners of Kentucky to do really important work on behalf of our entire state.

And it's work that matters and it's work that changes lives.

It's work that changed my life when I was young.

You know, my family was on those government programs for struggling families, and I credit the opportunities I've had with that work that other people did for me.

And so it really hit me that this is a big deal.

This is very serious.

And I'm just I'm so grateful to get to have the opportunity to serve in this way.