Authors Bio: Zack Hall for Kentucky is a former teacher and candidate for Kentucky’s State House District 84. The future of the Democratic Party looks Appalachian. For months now, people have been putting the party’s past under the microscope, trying to understand what has muddled the Democratic message in places like Hazard, Hopkinsville and Harlan — but Kentucky just gave the world a good look at what’s happening for the party now and what’s happening next. And I believe at both the state and national levels, rural Kentuckians will be leading the way. I spent Saturday, June 14 with fellow Democrats at the Kentucky Democratic Party’s State Convention in Owensboro. As Republicans wasted TV airtime to say Democrats are death rattling in rural Kentucky, we broke attendance records outside of the “blue dots” of Louisville and Lexington. It was the KDP’s biggest event in more than a decade, and many in the crowd that day and at the previous day’s Forward Together Dinner were first-time attendees — including Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin. That’s more like a rallying cry than a death rattle. It proves Kentucky Democrats are not dying out; they are building up. And at the foundation of both the KDP and the DNC is a family-focused mindset you could have mined from our Commonwealth’s great mountains. Take the issue of education. As a former public school student and teacher myself, I can testify to the effects of chronic underfunding under Republican leadership. Our rural schools already struggle to hire and retain teachers. Eastern Kentucky students are forced to go without the resources available in big cities — resources Democrats know students in every Kentucky zip code deserve. While Democrats push for teacher raises and pre-K for all, Republicans are letting the ultra-wealthy walk all over education. Look at the federal budget: our GOP congressmen are cheering as President Trump orders lawmakers to shrink Pell Grants and end other programs that help some of the most under-served students in the country make it from high school to college or a career. Medicaid helps nearly half of Kentucky’s 5th Congressional District residents get the care and medications they need to survive. While Democrats fight to protect and improve the program, Republicans are doing everything they can to slash it, forcing their constituents to cover billionaire tax breaks with their lives. In short, while Appalachians try to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” Republicans keep taking their dang boots. Kentucky deserves lawmakers who can balance a budget without costing millions of people health care. We deserve a party that will fight to give low-income students more options after high school, not fewer. We deserve leaders who will lead instead of running from their constituents. Gov. Beshear and Lt. Gov. Coleman won reelection in 2023 with stronger margins than they did in 2019 because they focus on people and the issues that affect them every day. That focus is what makes the Democratic Party the only party working to uplift all families — not just cityfolk and people with six-or-seven-figure incomes. We know after years of GOP distractions and fearmongering, we have our work cut out for us. But hard work built Appalachia and is rebuilding it right now, in the wake of generational poverty, abuse by big corporations and deadly floods and tornadoes. Mountain people aren’t afraid of a fight. That’s why the future of the Democratic Party is Appalachian. And the future of Appalachia is the Democratic Party. #zackhall #AppalachiaInsider #easternkentucky #Democrats #OpEd #Kentucky