Newport Candidate Forum

This past Thursday members of the Northern Kentucky chapter of  Kentuckians For The Commonwealth teamed up with allies from the Newport Citizens Advisory Council and the Brighton Center to help pull off an impressive candidate forum featuring the candidates for Newport City Commission! The event had over 60 Newport voters come out to hear where the candidates stand on a variety of issues. The questions were selected by taking suggestions from citizens of Newport, with a multi-neighborhood review committee selecting which questions were used that night.

The forum featured 5 of the 6 candidates for Newport City Commission, including Robert McCray, Jack Stoecklin, John Hayden, Beth Fennell, and Frank Peluso. The only candidate who was unable to attend, Tom Guidugli, Jr., was out of town at a conference, and sent a letter expressing his regrets. Each candidate was given equal time, and member Jeff Hampton remarked that the event itself was, "more substantive than the most recent presidential debate."

The event was a huge success for all 3 organizations, and was such a great success because of the combined efforts of the Newport Citizens Advisory Council and the chapter for doing turnout calls and e-mails leading up to the event. In fact, a couple of audience members were so pleased with the event that they asked for more information about KFTC afterwards, and joined on the spot! Many more took information on KentuckyElection.org to learn more about the candidates and other election work KFTC is doing in northern Kentucky.

The chapter hopes to build on this success as they begin their get out the vote work, and will be beginning turnout calls this upcoming week.