Stumbo Unveils Redistricting Proposal

{Frankfort, Kentucky}...A redistricting proposal unveiled Thursday by House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, calls for new political boundaries in Kentucky that would push U.S. Representative Hal Rogers to the outer edge of the state's 5th District that he has represented in Washington for 30 years. The proposal would also add several Democratic counties to the northeastern end of the district in a push that will likely be reversed in the GOP-controlled Kentucky Senate. Stumbo's proposal, approved along party lines by the House Committee on State Government, would give two of the state's largest cities, Ashland and Owensboro, different congressmen. If the plan survives in the Senate, Ashland and surrounding Democratic communities would move into Rogers' district and out of U.S. Representative Geoff Davis' 4th District, which runs the length of northern Kentucky from the Louisville suburbs to the West Virginia border. Owensboro would move from U.S. Representative Brett Guthrie's 2nd District that now encircles much of Louisville into U.S. Representative Ed Whitfield's 1st District in far western Kentucky.