Rep. Ed Whitfield (R)

The congressman from the 1st District is Ed Whitfield, a Republican elected in 1994. Whitfield grew up in Hopkinsville and Madisonville, in a family with Pennyrile roots going back to before 1800. He served in the Army Reserves, practiced law in Hopkinsville and was elected to the Legislature in 1973 as a Democrat. After one term in Frankfort, Whitfield ran an oil distributorship in the west Kentucky coalfields, then in 1979, moved to Washington to become an executive for the Seaboard and CSX railroads. He was legal counsel to the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission from 1991 to 1993, then returned to west Kentucky to run for Congress. The district long had been represented by quiet, long-serving, conservative Democrats. But the one-term incumbent, Tom Barlow, was a free-spirited supporter of the Clinton administration. Encouraged by Sen. Mitch McConnell, Whitfield ran as a Republican, turned aside criticism that he was carpetbagging and concentrated on attacking Barlow’s vote for Clinton’s first-term budget and tax increase. With help from the mountain counties and running strongly in the Pennyrile, Whitfield won 51%-49% in the big Republican sweep of 1994.

In the House, Whitfield has a moderate-to-conservative voting record and a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. One major concern has been aid to workers exposed to radiation at the uranium plant in Paducah. He overcame objections from the Bush administration to cleaning up the site, which is projected to cost more than $3 billion and last more than another decade. Whitfield is trying to work out a deal that keeps USEC’s plant operating. He voted for normal trade relations with China after the Chinese agreed to lower tariffs on imported tobacco, and he supported the tobacco buyout bill, which handsomely benefited local farmers. Bush in 2005 signed into law a bill Whitfield authored to discourage “doctor shopping” by prescription-drugs addicts. It established an electronic data base that the states can use to monitor people who cross state lines to buy pharmaceuticals. A thoroughbred owner, Whitfield co-sponsored legislation in 2006 to ban the killing of horses for meat. The House overwhelmingly passed the bill, but it died in the Senate. He also has encouraged industry leaders to restrict performance-enhancing drugs given to racehorses.

When Republicans were in the majority, Whitfield was chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee at Energy and Commerce. He held hearings on private data brokers who collect telephone records without customer permission, on the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet and on medical insurance for horse jockeys.

Whitfield has entrenched himself to the point that he is no longer much of a Democratic target. In 1996, when lawyer Dennis Null opposed him, Whitfield carried 18 of the district’s 31 counties, including Paducah, which he lost in 1994. He won his first re-election 54%-46%. In 1998, former Rep. Tom Barlow ran again, and Whitfield won 55%-45%. Since then, he has won easily. He defeated Barlow a third time in 2006, increasing his winning margin to 60%-40%. And in 2008, he beat anti-war protester Heather Ryan 64%-36%. This longtime Democratic stronghold now seems to be a safe Republican seat.