OWENSBORO, Ky. — Voters in Owensboro have a familiar decision to make for state representative this year.

Democrat Rep. Jim Glenn and Republican former Rep. DJ Johnson have run against each other three straight times now, and last time, just one vote separated the two men.

Johnson lost, contested the race, and after the Republican-controlled legislature ordered a recount, the result ended in a tie.

Johnson withdrew his challenge three months after Election Day.

“When I realized, my wording, how much of a circus it was going to be to go through that process, I withdrew my challenge,” Johnson said. “I would rather have the 13th District represented by somebody than by nobody, and with the legal battles we were probably going to have, we weren’t going to be represented by anybody.”

Glenn said he doesn’t think much about the race anymore.

“I just moved on,” Glenn said. “I tried to put my skill sets together and give the state the best representative; give Owensboro the best representative possible.”

Glenn represented House District 13 from 2007 until 2016, with a background as an economics professor for more than 30 years.

When he lost the 2016 election, he traveled the world, and he says that gave him a new perspective.

“We have a pandemic, economic crisis going on at this time. We need someone who has a global view who operates locally, and I do have that,” Glenn said.

Johnson works as operations manager for the Senior Community Center of Owensboro-Daviess County and is a retired U.S. Army Captain. He defeated Glenn in 2016 and served one term in the House before losing the following election.

He says he has unfinished business, especially with small business growth during his tenure.

“We brought in about 20 billion dollars worth of new businesses into Kentucky the first two years I was there and I want to keep that up,” Johnson said.

Johnson says the district used to be solidly Democratic but that has changed recently, and it is much more competitive.

“Now it’s really purple, it’s about a 50/50 district, and that’s simply because there are large numbers of Republicans registering that have never registered before and the Democrats have leveled, so as that happens, it gets tighter and tighter and tighter and I’d anticipate Tuesday that we’re going to have a very close race once again."

Glenn says he always has a close race for reelection and he isn’t expecting this year to be any different, also acknowledging the district has been trending more Republican recently.

He’ll be surprised if the race is as close as it was in 2018, though.

“I never expected the race to be that close,” Glenn said. “It happened. What happens, happens. And I just took it the way it was and moved on.”

55 percent of voters are registered Democrats while 35 percent are registered as Republicans, although President Donald Trump won the district by 63 percent, according to numbers from the Secretary of State’s office.