The primary election is May 21, and there are several candidates seeking their party's nomination. The Pure Politics team has contacted each candidate with a primary opponent to find out who they are, and what they stand for. 

Robert Conway is a Democrat running for Agriculture Commissioner.

Conway is a former GE executive, and business owner, after the 2008 recession hit, he returned to farming. Conway also served on the Scott County Board of Education for 12 years.

He decided to run for agriculture commissioner because he was disappointed in the Democratic Party for not putting up any candidates.

“The last day you could sign up for statewide office, the Democratic Party had no candidate, “he said. “And I got a call from a friend in Frankfort, who informed that there was candidate, and how terrible it was, and he asked me, I didn’t even see this coming, he said would you consider?”

Conway says at first, he said no, but after some pushing and checking with his wife, he agreed to run.

“I was very irritated that, to me, the Democratic Party had conceded the office, I was very upset the Democratic Party was not fielding a candidate, in my opinion had walked away from rural Kentucky,” he said. “Those are things that matter to me.”

He’s concerned with the increasing age of farmers. In Kentucky, the average age of a farmer is 60-years old.

“It’s scary if you think 20 years from now who’s gonna feed you?” he said. “I think we need to get young people involved in farming and agriculture. I think the future is bright but it’s extremely capital intensive. It takes a lot of money to farm.”

Bankruptcy for farmers is also at an all-time high, as well as the suicide rate among farmers, Conway says both of these things fly under the radar but they need to be addressed.  

Another issue that’s important to him is saving small family farms.  In 2010, there were 86,500 family farms across Kentucky; Conway says as of the end of 2017, that number has dwindled to 75,000.

“At that rate in 40 years, finding a family farm in the state of Kentucky, will be like trying to find a dairy farm, it would just be non-existent,” he said. “I think we need those farms, I think we need those values, I think we need those memories.”

Concerning farmers further, Conway says is that out of the 75,000 remaining farms, 37,000 of those, or 57 percent, have revenue of only $10,000 or less.

“We have to do something to improve the economics on farms,” he said. “The tobacco program left the state of Kentucky in 2004 that was the only thing that was a safety net.”

When the tobacco program left, so did more than $400 million, so far this hasn’t been replaced. Conway believes hemp could help replace tobacco, as well as medical and recreational marijuana, but he is warning people to be cautious.

 “As much jubilance as there is right now with the potential for hemp in the state of Kentucky, people need to pay attention,” he said. “Because big tobacco has bought into the hemp industry just since the first of January, and that does not bode well for small farmers. They need somebody in the commissioner agriculture to be the overseer, the protector.”

Conway he’s running a grassroots campaign and paying for his own way because this matters to him.

“I care probably more than anybody,” he said. “This is not a partisan race, I’m not running against my Democratic primary opponent, I’m not running against Ryan Quarles, I’m actually running for the job.”

Conway is running against Joe Trigg in the Democratic primary.