Robert Stivers

Turning to state politics now, we're just three months away from the 2027 Kentucky General Assembly.

So what are the priorities? We caught up with Senate President Robert Stivers at the recent SOAR Summit.

Well, we're gonna be talking about housing.

That's a big thing in Eastern Kentucky.

SOAR's central focus is to transform lives through meaningful employment.

Senate President Robert Stivers said the recent announcement of a new UTV manufacturing facility in Owsley County does just that.

It is 60 jobs, and they're gonna be good-paying jobs, in that $20 an hour range, and so that's very good.

And we've already had a lot of people say, "Hey, you know, if I can come back to Owsley County, live and work for that type of a wage," we call them the boomerangs.

The commercial concludes with Governor Andy Beshear carrying a cardboard cutout of Matt Bevin.

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers is blasting that ad.

He says Alvarado joined other Republicans to condemn Bevin's pardons when Alvarado was a member of the Kentucky State Senate.

Stivers says, quote, "Only Matt Bevin is responsible for the sins of Matt Bevin, and any attempt to blame someone else is simply gutter politics.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, several polls found that more than 75 percent of respondents supported federally mandated paid medical leave.

So does this mean that the 84-year-old's stiffened political views are out of step with his Kentucky constituents? Robert Stivers is the current president of the Kentucky State Senate, and he's known McConnell for more than 30 years.

Now, I was with him literally about this time last week, and we talked for 20 minutes.

Was he in a wheelchair? Yes.

And so a lot of people felt that they were kind of being left out of the loop.

But if indeed the bony, arthritic hands of America's elected gerontocracy refuse to relax their grip on power, and if younger people don't like it, surely there's a simple solution.

Robert Stivers thinks so.

So I don't think there should be any age test, one way or another, on how old you should be or should not be.

Here in the Finland capital of the country, of the Commonwealth, I would think an office like this has the potential to be beneficial to our efforts to remain that and remain visible on the national stage from a Finland standpoint.

I also think that his point about festivals continuing to thrive, when you look at the Louisville community being able to support festivals louder than life one weekend and bourbon and beyond the next weekend shows you that the infrastructure is there to support two big festivals i mean the who's who i remember a day where you were lucky to get a concert in louisville and now you've got two major festivals like that and it's not anything that i typically do but it's got to be an economic driver as well so uh so danny wimmer and his group deserve a lot of credit for being able to sustain those events In a similar vein to the show business, Bob Stivers, the Senate President for Kentucky, he has received the Motion Picture Association's 2026 Industry Champion Award for his work to expand film and television production in the state.

He was part of a ceremony in Washington, D.C. at this group's headquarters.

In his remarks, though, he said that our investments are opening doors for Kentucky talent, but then he goes on to say that that the credit goes to the people that are working in the industry to make it thrive.

Well, this bill that started the film office was Senate Bill No. 1 last year.

It was introduced by Senator Philip Wheeler of Pikeville and strongly supported by Senate President Robert Stivers.

They saw what was happening with the film industry in states such as Georgia, New Jersey, and New Mexico.

Last week, our Emily Prince had a chance to talk to Senator Stivers about his support.