In a two-and-a-half-minute YouTube video on Wednesday, Charles Booker announced he was in.
"The story I'd write is one where everyone in the Commonwealth can prosper," Booker said, announcing he'll seek the seat Mitch McConnell is vacating. "One where government shows up for us instead of stomping on us."
Booker pitched progressive policies, including universal health care and child care, affordable housing and energy, and a minimum of $40,000 a year for a 40-hour workweek.
He expressed solidarity across Kentucky's cultural and regional divides. He said he'd stood with coal miners in eastern Kentucky when a bankrupt company withheld their paychecks and with racial justice protesters in Louisville following the police killing of Breonna Taylor.
"I've stood with miners in Harlan County, on picket lines with my union family and social justice movements across Kentucky," Booker said, "from Pike to Jefferson to McCracken, from the hood to the holler."
Booker joins Air Force veteran Amy McGrath and horse trainer Dale Romans in next May's Democratic primary.
McGrath defeated Booker in the 2020 U.S. Senate primary. She then lost to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who's retiring next year.
Booker won the U.S. Senate primary in 2022 but then lost to Republican Sen. Rand Paul.
Republicans will also have multiple candidates to choose from in their May Senate primary.
Former Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Rep. Andy Barr, and businessman Nate Morris are vying to succeed McConnell, who's spent 40 years representing Kentucky in Washington.
Should Booker and Cameron prevail in their primaries, Kentucky would draw national attention for a U.S. Senate race between two Black candidates, a Democrat and a Republican.
"I mean, obviously, if you had two black men running for the U.S. Senate in a state like Kentucky, that would be historically meaningful and would attract some degree of attention," said Steven Voss, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky.
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