Sen. Julie Raque Adams gets $620K in outside help from GOP committees 

FRANKFORT – Since early last May, Republican outside groups have spent more than $620,000 to help reelect Julie Raque Adams to another term in the Kentucky Senate.

That’s nearly twice as much help as any other candidate on the Kentucky ballot this year – Republican or Democrat – has gotten from outside groups, according to the list of “independent expenditures” on the Kentucky Registry of Election website.

The expenditures for advertising to help Adams’ campaign come from five Republican or conservative groups. But the lion’s share of this support has come from GOPAC – a nonprofit political committee which has had a strong presence in Kentucky for years.

Adams, a Republican who represents the 36th Senate District in Louisville, may seem an unlikely candidate for needing outside help. She has demonstrated her popularity at the polls by winning three straight elections to her Senate seat, and two elections before that to the Kentucky House. She chairs the Senate’s Licensing and Occupations Committee, and her own campaign committee reported last month it has $451,000 in cash on hand.

But last April, a Kentucky Lantern story revealed that Adams was paid $80,500 since 2023 by an inactive political committee she headed – a political committee called Kentucky Strong that has been funded exclusively by lobbying interests in recent years. In fact the $80,500 paid to Adams was the only spending that Kentucky Strong had done in the prior three years, according to a report it filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The flow began late in the primary

The independent expenditures for Adams began a month after the Lantern story: GOPAC reported in early May it spent $230,000 on digital media and texting services supporting Adams. Also in May, the Kentucky Conservative Fund reported making $90,934 in independent expenditures supporting Adams.

Adams routed her opponent in the May 19 Republican primary capturing 80 percent of the vote. She faces Democrat Sarah Cole McIntosh, a former member of the Jefferson County Board of Education in November.

The flood of outside spending to help Adams resumed in late August: GOPAC came through with an additional $169,158; the Republican State Leadership Committee spent $74,500; Commonwealth Conservative Coalition, $40,000; and Americans for Prosperity $17,627.

Adams did not reply to an email from Kentucky Lantern asking questions about her support from the Republican groups and for an update on the activity of a revived Kentucky Strong. She could not be reached by the Lantern through the Republican Party of Kentucky or the state Senate majority offices.

Despite Adams’ massive edge in money, Democrats say the unique circumstances of this election – such as Trump’s plunging popularity – give McIntosh a shot at winning.

“Republican Super PACs are spending big to try to bail out Sen. Julie Raque Adams because voters will hold her accountable for her failed leadership in Frankfort,” said Kentucky Democratic Party Director of Communications Nat Turner.

The Lantern could not reach GOPAC by phone, and GOPAC did not respond to an email.

Independent expenditures

Independent expenditures are payments by groups or individuals for advertising that advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. There is no limit on the amount of an independent expenditure, nor is there a limit on how much a donor can contribute to a super PAC that makes independent expenditures. However, the law requires that these expenditures not be made in coordination with the campaign being helped by the expenditure.

Kentucky law requires independent expenditures be reported to the state election registry. As of Friday, the registry’s website listed 358 independent expenditures so far for the 2026 Kentucky elections in races of all sorts (magistrate, school board, county judge executive, etc.) Most of them have been for candidates for the Kentucky legislature.

Adams has received far more help than any Kentucky candidate from the spending of these outside groups this year – $622,220. The candidate receiving the next most help so far this year is Republican State Rep. Kim Holloway, of Mayfield, who has benefitted from $336,041 in advertising from independent spenders. (The vast majority of that – $312,000 – came from the Kentucky Conservative Fund in the primary.)

While some outside groups – particularly the Kentucky Conservative Fund – have made many such expenditures for many candidates in Kentucky this year, GOPAC has bought independent advertising only for Adams.

GOPAC

GOPAC  Inc. is a large national Republican committee based in Arlington, Virginia. It was created in 1979 to help train and elect Republicans to state and local offices. It is a nonprofit organized under Section 527 of the IRS Code. Like Kentucky Strong it must report its contributions and expenses to the IRS. The independent expenditures to support Adams this year came from its affiliated PAC called GOPAC Election Fund, which files its contributions and spending with the Federal Election Commission. The FEC website shows GOPAC Election Fund has reported $23.9 million in receipts between Jan. 1, 2025 and Aug. 31, 2026, with 84 percent of the receipts coming from GOPAC Inc.

GOPAC has had close ties to Kentucky for several years. Former Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, a Georgetown Republican and friend of Adams, was an active member of GOPAC’s Legislative Leaders Advisory Board before he retired as a legislator at the end of 2025. Currently, the GOPAC website lists Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Max Wise and House Majority Leader Steven Rudy as members of the advisory board.

And GOPAC gets a steady flow of donations from Kentucky, according to its reports posted on an IRS website. Since Jan. 1, 2025: Churchill Downs has contributed $230,000; Sazerac Company, of Louisville, $90,500; Frankfort lobbying firm Top Shelf Lobby, $35,000; another Frankfort lobbying firm McCarthy Strategic Solutions, $25,000; lobbying firm Commonwealth Alliance, $15,000; lobbying firm HCM Governmental Relations of Lexington, $15,000; the Kentucky Association of Health Care Facilities, $10,0000; Yum Brands, of Louisville, $10,000.

It has many larger out-of-state donors, but many of them have a strong lobbying presence in Frankfort. Its biggest donors include tobacco interests (Reynolds American, Altria Client Service, PMI Global). It also gets large contributions from the gambling sector, pharmaceutical interests, the alcoholic beverage industry and others. And one of Kentucky Strong’s major funders that has a strong lobbying presence in Frankfort, Charter Communications, of St. Louis, has contributed $240,000 to GOPAC since the beginning of 2025.

Kentucky Strong 

On April 6, the Lantern revealed that the only expenses of Kentucky Strong during the prior three years were 12 payments to Adams totaling $80,500. Over roughly the same period, Kentucky Strong was funded exclusively by interests that actively lobby the Kentucky General Assembly, including $50,000 from Revolutionary Racing, which operates Sandy’s Racing & Gaming in Ashland; $25,000 from Churchill Downs; $15,000 from Charter Communications; and $15,000 from LG&E and KU Energy.

Kentucky Strong Inc. was founded in 2015 by Adams and two other Republican women from Louisville. Its initial tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service said it is “dedicated to training Republican women to seek and hold public office.” It hoped to match the success recruiting female candidates of a nonprofit started by Democratic women in 2009 called Emerge Kentucky.

Adams told the Lantern last spring that she was doing lots of work to earn her pay, which she said covered out-of-pocket expenses as she drove to meetings to encourage both prospective candidates as well as Republican women already in office. She said she created training materials, travelled to speaking engagements and media appearances and did all of Kentucky Strong’s fundraising. Yet she did not respond to an emailed question last spring asking to identify any specific large, out-of-pocket expenses in recent years, nor did she  identify a candidate who ran for office because of the recruitment and training by Kentucky Strong.

Last spring, Kentucky Strong had no online presence, no website, no Facebook page. It was labeled “inactive” by the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office because it had not filed a required annual corporation report since 2018. (However, it had filed reports of its donations and expenses with the IRS during this period. Those reports were the basis of the Lantern story.)

After the Lantern story was published an official of the Louisville Democratic Party filed a complaint against Adams with the Legislative Ethics Commission. But that complaint was dismissed by the commission.

And Kentucky Strong is again showing signs of life. A Google search will reveal that its website is up and includes an application women can fill out to participate in a leadership training program. The site also features endorsements of two incumbent Republican state representatives – Kim Moser and Kim Banta – and a cover article giving numbers that show the underrepresentation of Republican women in public office in Kentucky.

Kentucky Strong’s most recent report filed with the IRS this summer shows that in the spring it paid expenses for digital advertising, reestablishing its website and social media presence, and fees paid to the Secretary of State’s office to restore its status as an active corporation.