Kentucky’s 2026 Senate election presents CIVPAC with a difficult choice among candidates whose strengths and weaknesses fall in very different places.
Republican Andy Barr is generally closer to us on reliance on markets, regulation and some questions of fiscal restraint, although his emphasis on tax cuts and expanded domestic energy production does not necessarily correspond to our own approach. Democrat Charles Booker favors a substantially larger governmental role in several areas, particularly labor, health care and social policy. Christopher Campbell, running under the Kentucky Party label, is also substantially to our left domestically, though with a different mix of policies, and is sharply skeptical of America’s present military commitments.
The comparison becomes less straightforward when we turn to foreign policy, presidential power and the institutional independence of Congress.
Andy Barr
Barr has represented Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District since 2013. A graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Kentucky College of Law, he practiced law and taught constitutional and administrative law before entering Congress. His House work has included financial regulation, foreign affairs and national security.
Barr favors lower taxes, deregulation and limits on federal spending. He has also supported a balanced-budget amendment. We share his concern about long-term fiscal discipline but do not regard lower taxes as an objective independent of spending commitments and the deficit, and generally prefer substantive fiscal reform to a constitutional balanced-budget requirement.
His emphasis on expanded domestic energy production also differs somewhat from our approach. CIVPAC favors allowing markets to determine the energy mix while incorporating environmental costs, most directly through our proposed carbon tax, rather than treating maximum production of any particular fuel as an independent objective.
Barr’s record on Ukraine and Russia is a significant strength from CIVPAC’s perspective. He strongly supported military and economic assistance after Russia’s invasion and has advocated stronger sanctions intended to deny Russia energy revenues. In April 2024 he was among 101 House Republicans who joined Democrats in approving the large Ukraine security package. He has also pressed for greater scrutiny of Chinese assistance to Moscow.
That record is substantially consistent with our foreign-policy framework, which regards helping Ukraine resist Russian aggression as serving American interests well beyond Ukraine itself.
Barr also deserves considerable credit under CIVPAC’s criteria for his conduct after the 2020 presidential election. On January 6, 2021, he opposed congressional objections to certified electoral votes. His explanation was unusually institutional: whatever concerns he had about election administration, he concluded that Congress lacked constitutional authority to substitute its judgment for state certification and the courts once the states had completed their legal processes.
That is the kind of institutional reasoning CIVPAC would like to see from a senator.
Barr and President Trump
The difficulty is that Barr’s record during President Trump’s second term provides less evidence of independence.
His Senate campaign presents him as a “Champion for the America First Agenda,” emphasizes that he was the first member of Kentucky’s congressional delegation to endorse Trump and notes that he chaired Trump’s 2024 Kentucky primary campaign. Barr has described himself as a strong ally of the president.
Political support for a president of one’s own party is not itself disqualifying under CIVPAC’s approach. The relevant question is whether a senator will recognize occasions when the Constitution and the institutional responsibilities of Congress require independence from that president.
On war powers, Barr has taken a considerably more deferential view of presidential authority than we do. During the 2026 Iran conflict, he opposed a resolution requiring withdrawal from hostilities and argued that presidents possess substantial independent power to conduct military operations. He acknowledged Congress’s powers to declare war and control appropriations but argued that the president does not need congressional permission to engage in hostilities to protect the United States.
The wisdom of the Iran war is open to reasonable disagreement. The institutional question is different. We would like Barr to explain where he draws the constitutional line. What duration, scale or purpose of hostilities would, in his view, require affirmative congressional authorization rather than merely continued congressional funding?
On tariffs, Barr likewise supported President Trump’s effort to continue broad tariffs after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s earlier legal basis for much of the program. CIVPAC is skeptical both of broad tariffs as economic policy and of using presidential authority to impose what amount to taxes without meaningful congressional participation. Our trade policy favors generally free trade, subject to genuine national-security concerns and fair-trade protections.
The contrast is striking. In 2021, Barr concluded that constitutional boundaries required him to resist presidential pressure over election certification. In 2026, on war powers and tariffs, he has been considerably more accepting of presidential authority.
Presidential Appointments
Barr’s move from the House to the Senate would also give him a constitutional responsibility he does not now possess: voting on presidential nominations.
He therefore had no vote on President Trump’s most consequential and, in our view, counterproductive appointments, including Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Todd Blanche.
But a senator does.
Some Republican senators have been willing to reject nominees of a Republican president. We would like to know whether Barr would exercise that same independent judgment.
Would he have supported all of these nominees? If not, where would he have drawn the line?
That answer would tell voters something important about what Barr’s promise to be an ally of President Trump would mean once he became a member of an institution with constitutional responsibilities separate from those of the president.
Immigration and Social Policy
Barr’s immigration policy is considerably more restrictive than ours. He supports increased ICE and Border Patrol funding, the border wall, Remain in Mexico and aggressive enforcement. He has also proposed a constitutional amendment ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants.
CIVPAC supports effective border enforcement and a functioning legal immigration system but takes a more accommodating view toward legal immigration and toward otherwise law-abiding people who have established lives in the United States. Our approach is set out more fully in our immigration policy.
Barr is also substantially to our right on abortion and some gender-related issues. He supported reversal of Roe v. Wade and identifies with the congressional pro-life movement. He has also sought federal enforcement of restrictions on transgender participation in women’s athletics.
CIVPAC’s abortion policy favors restoring a framework broadly similar to Roe and Casey. On gender-identity questions, we generally prefer decisions by medical and athletic institutions rather than legislatures, except where government necessarily has a role through anti-discrimination law or other existing legal responsibilities.
Charles Booker
Booker earned both his bachelor’s degree in political science and his law degree from the University of Louisville. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives, later founded Hood to the Holler and was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2022.
Booker’s current platform combines a substantial governmental role in health care, labor and household costs with some proposals that preserve private choice.
On health care, for example, he is not presently proposing Medicare for All. His 2026 platform calls for restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies and creating a state-run public insurance option that Kentuckians could choose while retaining private insurance. He also favors expanded Medicare drug-price negotiation and tying maximum prescription-drug prices to prices in other countries.
His economic program nevertheless remains more interventionist than ours. Booker supports stronger organized-labor protections, higher public investment and a significant federal role in reducing household costs. His proposals include ending broad tariffs, temporarily suspending the federal gasoline tax, restoring ACA subsidies, expanding prescription-drug price negotiation, increasing energy-efficiency assistance, refinancing high-interest student loans and helping first-time homebuyers. He also promises tax cuts for working- and middle-class families, although his platform does not specify the tax changes or income limits.
Not all of these ideas point in the same ideological direction. Ending broad tariffs is consistent with CIVPAC’s trade policy, and an optional public insurance plan is materially different from eliminating private health insurance.
Booker’s strong alignment with organized labor remains a significant area of disagreement. CIVPAC supports workers’ right to organize but places greater weight on individual worker choice, secret-ballot certification elections and state right-to-work laws, as explained in our labor policy.
On abortion, Booker is substantially closer to CIVPAC than Barr. He has described reproductive autonomy as a question of individual freedom and told a Planned Parenthood rally that he was “proud to stand for abortion care.”
Booker, War Powers and Foreign Policy
Booker is also considerably closer to us on the constitutional allocation of war powers.
After President Trump initiated military action against Iran in 2026, Booker called for Congress to reclaim its constitutional role. His foreign-policy platform proposes modernizing the War Powers Resolution, ending obsolete authorizations for military force and requiring future authorizations to contain geographic and time limits.
That is a substantially more congressional view of war powers than Barr’s.
Booker’s platform also outlines a general foreign-policy framework. He supports a strong military together with diplomacy, intelligence, cybersecurity, secure supply chains and what he calls “key alliances.” He opposes open-ended or unnecessary military intervention.
Important questions nevertheless remain. His platform does not tell us clearly what he believes about continued assistance to Ukraine, NATO, deterrence of Russia and China, or the broader American role in sustaining the international order.
Those are not minor omissions from CIVPAC’s perspective. Our foreign-policy framework treats strong alliances, deterrence and assistance to countries resisting aggression as tools for preventing larger wars. Opposition to unnecessary American military intervention is entirely compatible with such a policy. We would like to know where Booker draws that distinction.
Booker also proposes terminating the existing annual American military-aid commitment to Israel and suspending future military assistance and arms sales until a two-state solution is enacted. That is a consequential departure from current American policy and deserves fuller explanation. A viable two-state settlement cannot be enacted by Israel alone; it requires a willing and capable Palestinian counterpart and agreement on difficult questions of security, borders and governance. Booker’s proposal therefore leaves unclear what conditions would permit American assistance to resume if a two-state agreement remained impossible for reasons not attributable solely to Israel.
Christopher Campbell
Christopher Campbell is a union member, served in the Kentucky National Guard, graduated from Eastern Kentucky University and has worked in nursing homes, hospitals, health departments and rape-crisis centers. He is running as the candidate of the Kentucky Party.
His domestic platform is substantially more interventionist than CIVPAC’s. He supports Medicare for All, strong union rights, a constitutional environmental-rights amendment, broad reproductive rights and a constitutional amendment denying constitutional rights to corporations. He also supports ranked-choice voting, abolishing the Electoral College and imposing term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court.
There are individual areas of agreement, particularly election reform and reproductive freedom. His position on corporate constitutional rights, however, differs substantially from CIVPAC’s campaign-finance policy, which regards political spending as constitutionally protected speech while emphasizing disclosure and transparency.
His foreign-policy program creates an even sharper difference.
Campbell describes himself as “Anti-War, Pro-Military,” but proposes an immediate moratorium on all American military aid—money, weapons and personnel—to foreign governments, substantial consolidation of overseas bases and reducing defense spending toward approximately one percent of GDP.
That policy would apparently end military assistance to Ukraine as well as aid to other allies confronting external threats. It differs fundamentally from our view that alliances and appropriately targeted military assistance are important tools for deterring larger wars.
Unlike Booker, Campbell therefore leaves relatively little ambiguity about this aspect of his foreign policy. The disagreement is principally substantive rather than informational.
Campbell and Senate Control
One important institutional question does remain unanswered:
With which party, if either, would Campbell caucus in the United States Senate?
Running outside the two major parties does not eliminate the consequences of that choice. Independent senators may caucus with one of the major parties for purposes of organizing the chamber.
In a closely divided Senate, Campbell’s decision could affect committee control, investigative authority and the floor agenda.
Many of his domestic positions overlap more closely with Democrats than Republicans, but that does not tell voters how he would vote to organize the Senate. He should address the question directly.Divided Government and Congressional Independence
The race also raises the question of divided government.
With a Republican president, Barr would be another Republican vote toward control of the Senate. That affects more than individual legislation: Senate control determines committee leadership, investigative authority, much of the floor agenda and the treatment of presidential nominations.
CIVPAC places some value on divided government because Congress appears more likely to scrutinize executive power when political incentives reinforce its institutional responsibilities.
That is a consideration, not an automatic rule. Barr’s refusal to participate in overturning the 2020 election is meaningful evidence of independence under that standard. His positions on war powers and tariffs, together with his close identification with President Trump, raise the opposite question.
Booker would provide an opposition-party check on the current administration, but divided government cannot by itself overcome substantial disagreements on economic or foreign policy.
Campbell’s effect on Senate control cannot be evaluated until he says how he would caucus.
What to Watch in the Debate
Barr and Booker are scheduled to meet in a televised October 19 debate hosted by Gray Media stations and the League of Women Voters of Kentucky.
For Barr, the central question is where his constitutional limits on presidential power actually lie. What kind of military conflict would require affirmative congressional authorization? When would he reject a president’s use of tariff authority? And, as a senator, would he have supported all of President Trump’s controversial appointments?
His position on Ukraine also matters. Would he maintain his previous support if the administration pressed for a settlement that rewarded Russian territorial aggression?
Barr also faces a fiscal question. Tax cuts, protection of major entitlement programs, increased defense spending and deficit reduction cannot all be treated as costless commitments.
For Booker, the most important remaining foreign-policy questions concern Ukraine, NATO, Russia and China. His platform supports a strong military and key alliances, but voters still do not know how those general principles translate into these specific commitments, particularly given his opposition to unnecessary military intervention.
His Israel proposal also deserves clarification. If military assistance is to remain suspended until a two-state solution exists, what happens if such an agreement cannot be reached because one or both of the parties refuse the compromises necessary to create it?
Booker’s domestic proposals deserve fiscal scrutiny as well. Expanded subsidies, public programs and labor protections involve costs, taxes, incentives and economic tradeoffs that should be addressed.
For Campbell, the most important unanswered institutional question remains which party, if either, he would caucus with. His proposal to halt all foreign military assistance also raises a straightforward question: how would the United States respond when an allied democracy is defending itself against invasion?
Finally, all three candidates could usefully answer a broader question:
Can each identify an important issue on which he would be willing to oppose a president he otherwise supported—and explain why?
Preliminary Assessment
Barr combines substantial foreign-policy experience, a strong record of supporting Ukraine and an important act of constitutional independence during the 2020 election certification with a considerably more deferential approach to presidential authority on tariffs and war powers during Trump’s second term. His approach to the Senate’s advice-and-consent responsibility also remains unknown.
Booker’s platform combines a substantial governmental role in labor and domestic policy with a more conventional public-private approach to health care and a general commitment to military strength and alliances. Important questions remain about Ukraine, NATO, Russia and China, as well as the practical implications of his proposed conditions on aid to Israel.
Campbell offers a clear third-party alternative, but his expansive domestic program and proposed halt to all foreign military assistance differ substantially from CIVPAC’s approach. His caucusing intentions also remain unknown.
The October 19 Barr–Booker debate should answer some of these questions. Campbell should likewise have an opportunity to address the issues his candidacy raises.
For now, CIVPAC will continue to evaluate the Kentucky Senate race. In the meantime, we hope this evaluation helps Kentucky voters understand the choices before them.