Republican Ralph Alvarado, who made history as Kentucky’s first Hispanic state legislator but then left to become Tennessee’s top public health leader, reentered Bluegrass State politics on Thursday by announcing his bid for an open congressional seat targeted by Democrats in 2026.
Alvarado, a medical doctor and the son of immigrants, will compete for Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District seat now occupied by Republican Rep. Andy Barr, who is in a hotly contested race to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Republican Senate leader, in next next year’s midterm election.
Seen as a rising conservative star during his years in the Kentucky Senate, Alvarado pledged to align with President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda as he kicked off his congressional campaign.
“Kentuckians are fed up with open borders, sky-high prices and unelected bureaucrats who trample our freedoms,” Alvarado said in a statement. “I’m running for Congress to fight for working families, stop the invasion at our southern border once and for all, and fight the woke agenda.”
Republican state Reps. Ryan Dotson and Deanna Gordon entered the House race earlier, also touting their conservative credentials and setting up the prospect of a competitive primary next spring.
The Democratic field also grew Thursday, with former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo entering the campaign. Dembo, also a former policy adviser for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, said his focus will include creating good-paying jobs, fighting back against Medicaid cuts and opposing tariffs that he said are hurting crucial Kentucky industries.
“Central Kentucky deserves to have a representative in Washington who stands up for families, works to lower their cost of living, expands access to affordable healthcare and protects their safety,” Dembo said in a statement.
National Democrats list Kentucky’s 6th among dozens of districts nationally that they’re targeting in hopes of winning back the narrowly divided House in 2026. Other Democratic candidates for the Kentucky congressional seat include ex-state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson and David Kloiber, a former Lexington city councilman.
Alvarado’s campaign said he preserved his Kentucky ties while working in Tennessee, noting that he maintained his longtime home in Clark County in the district and continued to do medical work in the district. He typically returned home multiple times each month.
He was the first Hispanic member of Kentucky’s legislature, his campaign said, having been first elected in 2014. He has said his immigrant parents made big sacrifices to get him a good education. His father was from Costa Rica, and his mother is from Argentina.
Alvarado ran for statewide office in Kentucky as then-Gov. Matt Bevin’s running mate in 2019, but Bevin lost his reelection bid to Beshear. Alvarado left the Kentucky Senate to step into the role as Tennessee’s health department commissioner in Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s administration in 2023.
Lee last week announced Alvarado’s departure from the state health department, saying Alvarado “faithfully served Tennesseans throughout his tenure.”
Alvarado’s role in promoting Bevin during the 2019 campaign could surface as an issue in next year’s congressional race as Bevin’s pugnacious style turned off many Kentucky voters.
The 6th District stretches from central Kentucky’s bluegrass region to the Appalachian foothills. It flipped between Democratic and Republican representation for decades, but Barr has locked down the seat for the GOP for more than a decade, fending off a tough Democratic challenger in 2018.
Since then, the GOP-led legislature removed Democratic-leaning Frankfort, Kentucky’s capital city, from the 6th District during the most recent round of redistricting, seemingly making it a steeper challenge for Democrats. The district includes Democratic-trending Lexington, the state’s second-largest city, and covers multiple rural counties that are Republican strongholds.
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