As she watched election results come in in 2024, Melissa Strange was fed up.
“I was obviously already very frustrated with the current state of our government and our democracy, and how things were going, and I could see what was coming next,” she recounted to Hellbender Newsroom.
As a lifelong Northern Kentuckian, Strange had watched the more conservative area repeatedly reelect US Rep. Thomas Massie—not necessarily because they liked him, she said, but because he was the Republican on the ballot.
No Democrat challenged Massie in 2024. In election night-fueled frustration, Strange decided that for the first time in her life, she was going to run for office—against him.
“I just felt like, OK, I have to get involved, I’ve got to do something, and this is an area where we don’t feel like we’re getting represented properly, and I feel like I live here, I know this community, I could do this,” Strange said.
Fast forward to the days following Kentucky’s 2026 primaries, and Strange will be on the ballot come November for Kentucky’s 4th Congressional seat after she snagged the Democratic nomination with more than 70% of the vote.
Massie, however, will not be joining her. Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein won the Republican nomination after Northern Kentucky’s normally sleepy congressional primary became the most expensive US House primary in history.
It’s unclear how much of the national attention on the primary will stick around for the general election. Just over half of Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District voters are registered Republicans, making it—on paper, at least—one of the most conservative areas in the state.
The district includes everything from rural farmland, to spots trying to figure out next steps after signature industries died out, to wealthier suburbs outside of Louisville and Cincinnati, to cities dotting the Ohio River.
The issue she hears about most from Kentuckians? Affordability.
“It really is affecting everyone … everybody feels it,” Strange said. “Nobody wants to have to pay more for anything, even if you can afford it, but when you can’t afford it, and people are really struggling, it takes it to a whole another level.”
Strange said she would support ending Trump’s tariffs, as well as raising the federal minimum wage to better keep pace with inflating prices.
Healthcare access comingles with the affordability issue, because most people’s concern with healthcare is being able to afford it, she said.
But Kentucky is in a unique spot: Many Kentuckians already struggle with accessing the healthcare they need, and Kentucky tops the list of states with the most rural hospitals at risk of shutting down due to $1 trillion in federal Medicaid cuts signed into law by Trump last year. A hospital closure means it is more difficult to access doctors, she said, but also means a major loss of jobs—sometimes, these hospitals are one of the county’s top employers.
Public education is another popular topic she hears about on the campaign trail. Strange noted pushes to dismantle the federal Department of Education—something Massie supported and she does not—are a signal of a larger disconnect between people and their politicians.
“When I’m in my community, when I talk to people, and what they tell me they want is not at all what they’re doing, what they’re addressing, and what they’re tackling right now in Washington,” Strange said.
Strange is part of the Take BAC Congress coalition—a group of candidates running on a promise to, if elected, work together in DC to “push some actual real change to things that we feel are badly needed to be fixed in government.”
The coalition supports term limits for members of Congress, forbidding stock trading for lawmakers, and blocking former legislators from going straight into lobbying the legislative bodies they just left.
“We can spend so much time and energy fighting with one another on policy about specific things,” Strange said, but if they aren’t “actually coming together and coming to consensus and compromising and being willing to give and take to find on something that is some, you know, is a win-win and not a win-lose, you don’t have legislation that really lasts.”
