Kentucky's primary election is 26 days away.

Can you believe it?

And no doubt you're seeing more campaign ads during television commercial breaks.

Well, yesterday I spoke with northern Kentucky journalist Mark Payne about a story he enterprise for link inquiry about one Republican gubernatorial hopeful's messaging strategy and the consulting company being used that helped Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin score his upset victory in 2021.

Mark Payne The government and politics reporter for link n k wykeham, thank you so much for your time.

We appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Renee.

So I was intrigued by a story that you recently wrote.

Craft campaign spends more than 5.3 million on advertising campaign expenses consulting services.

The headline makes it sound like, okay, what?

Whatever.

But the story is is quite interesting and a little bit entangled a little bit with other interests.

And there are some fine threads and through lines that I want you to kind of talk to us about.

What are you seeing with the craft campaign that makes it unique or follows in line with maybe some other campaigns in other states, particularly when it comes to messaging, to issues that are being taken up and even consulting services that are being used?

Yeah.

So one of the things that I noticed between Crafts campaign and some other campaigns around the country is that they use similar themes around, you know, the transgender issue that's being discussed in the country right now.

And specifically, it's a very hot topic in Kentucky with Kentucky just passing legislation to ban gender affirming care in Kentucky.

That was something that I don't necessarily think was on a lot of folks radars until January.

And when 2023 legislative session started and then rhetoric around education.

And so I started looking at these other campaigns specifically Glen Youngkin, who is the governor of Virginia, who kind of had a surprise win in 2021.

And I noticed that there was a common denominator between some of this rhetoric and campaigns.

And that was a GOP consulting firm called Axiom Strategies and their media buying division, AX Media.

And so I had kind of started looking at this when I started reporting on Kelly Craft campaign a couple of weeks ago.

After the legislative session, I noticed that, you know, some of the staffers were at an event in Newport, and it kind of just got my brain turned on a little bit.

I was like, you know, is this are these messages coming from, you know, a consulting firm or are they coming up more organically?

And so I did speak to the folks at Axiom, and they told me that, you know, this conversation around transgender issues and education is happening organically around the country and it's starting to spread.

And campaigns seem to be tapping into that.

And of course, now that we're in a gubernatorial election year, we see Kelly Craft as probably the candidate that's tapping into it most.

We've seen some recent advertisements that she has put out that show woke, woke bureaucrats parachuting into schools and teaching CRT.

And so, you know, I started to tie some of these things together.

And they seem they do seem to have a common denominator.

They seem to have a common thread.

And the folks at Axiom say they don't.

They said that, you know, it's just happening organically and that is just what is on voters minds right now.

Link, why is co-hosting a debate with some of the top Republican contenders for governor next Wednesday, April the 26th?

The link in K-Y dot com website has details and you can watch it there.

And don't forget, Katie's Kentucky tonight, we'll have a conversation with several Republican gubernatorial candidates on Monday, May 1st.

We'll have other candidate conversations on April 24th and May eight.