Melissa Strange spoke to the Kenton County Rotary Club in Villa Hills Thursday, pitching her policy platform and fielding questions from the Rotarians as she prepares for the upcoming November election.
“I want to disrupt, and I want to get people thinking again about the candidate that they’re voting for, and not just the party,” Strange told the Rotarians.
Strange is the Democratic nominee for Kentucky Congressional District 4 of the House of Representatives. She will face off against Republican Ed Gallrein, Libertarian Jeremy Todd and independent write-in candidate Peter Harmon Williams in the November general election. Gallrein spoke to the Rotarians last week.
The Rotary Club is a service organization dedicated to helping others. It participates in charity drives and other community service events and works to increase civic engagement by hosting candidate forums and speaking events.
Strange discussed her familial and professional background, her motivations for running, as well as the specifics of her policy platform. While she admitted that it was difficult to make generalizations about a district as large as District 4, there were a few key issues she’d heard from constituents as she’s campaigned.
“The cost of living emergency is what I hear everywhere,” Strange said. “It is the number one issue on everyone’s minds.”
Among the other issues of her platform were reasserting Congress as a check on executive power (which she argued had been eroded), finding a diplomatic end to the war in Iran, increasing the federal minimum wage, reforming healthcare, enacting Congressional term limits, banning stock trading by Congress people, repealing Citizens United and securing individual privacy rights, especially in the face of the proliferation of Flock cameras and similar devices.
Another big priority she pointed to was undoing the cuts to SNAP, Medicaid and other federal benefits enacted by the Big Beautiful Bill. When one of the Rotarians asked what bill she would introduce to the House floor if elected, she said a bill rolling back the cuts would be first.
“I think we have to have some legislation that addresses some of those things that happened that were in that Big Beautiful Bill to make sure that we do not have hundreds of thousands of people losing Medicaid benefits and rural hospitals being affected,” Strange said.
The Rotarians had other questions.
Jana Kemp, who said that she wrote to her representatives a lot, asked what would be the best way to communicate with Strange if she was elected.
“Washington’s fine, but this is home, and I like to be here,” said Strange. “So, I fully intend to be here as much as I possibly can,” adding that she would be in favor of doing regular town halls and other forms of face-to-face communication.
Pam Albers asked who Strange would want as Speaker of the House.
Strange said that although she liked Hakeem Jeffries, “I’m struggling a little bit right now with some of the Democratic leadership.”
As such, she said, “I’m open to someone else to step up who might have a better argument.”
Albers then asked, point blank: “Are you pro-life?”
“I am pro-choice,” Strange said, caveating that by saying she was raised Catholic and that the basis of her position was that “I don’t feel like that the government has the right to make medical decisions for you.”
Samantha Corwin asked what Strange’s plan was for funding senior care and long-term disability care. Strange replied that she hadn’t yet developed a specific plan for that, but that it would be one of her priorities within the budgeting process if elected.
“To me, things like that-that’s wise spending,” Strange said. “That’s taking care of people, and that’s the way we should be spending taxpayer dollars.”
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