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Joe Sonka
Enterprise Statehouse ReporterJoe Sonka is Kentucky Public Radio’s first enterprise statehouse reporter. He joined the team in October 2023.
Joe has covered Kentucky government and politics for nearly two decades. He grew up in Lexington and moved to Louisville in 2011, covering city and state government at LEO Weekly and then Insider Louisville. He became state government reporter for the Courier Journal in 2019 and was a lead reporter for the newspaper's 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning series on former Gov. Matt Bevin's controversial pardons just before leaving office.
You can email Joe at jsonka@lpm.org and find him at non-Twitter apps such as Threads (@joesonkaky) and BlueSky (@joesonka.bsky.social).
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Beshear deflected a question about his position on the Israeli conflict in Gaza on Thursday.
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In a morning call Monday, nearly all of Kentucky’s Democratic delegates endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month.
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Central Kentucky native Johnny Boone evaded a federal manhunt for eight years, following his 20-year sentence for leading what federal prosecutors called the largest domestic marijuana syndicate in American history.
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The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed an appeals court ruling that Rep. Nima Kulkarni is disqualified from running in the Democratic primary.
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Outgoing state Sen. Whitney Westerfield was one of the only GOP officials in Kentucky to not denounce Trump’s conviction, and instead criticize his colleagues for undermining faith in the justice system.
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Kim Holloway was able to defeat longtime GOP incumbent Rep. Richard Heath despite having no PAC support and little funding.
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Aaron Reed says he was able to win his Republican primary despite opposition from the Senate GOP’s supermajority caucus, which will give him some clout in Frankfort.
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Rep. Killian Timoney lost by a wide margin in his Lexington district, despite supportive PACs spending heavily to keep the moderate Republican in office.
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Senate Minority Leader Gerald Neal, Rep. Nima Kulkarni and Mary Lou Marzian won their party’s nomination for seats in the Kentucky legislature.
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All six of Kentucky’s U.S. representatives are up for reelection this year, but two will face no Democratic opponent in the general election this fall.