Carolyn Dupont has enjoyed a successful career as an educator at Eastern Kentucky University, where she has taught for 15 years. Family stories of survival during hard times sparked her curiosity about the past and nurtured her love of history, her chosen discipline. She is the great-granddaughter of an illiterate Texas farmer, the granddaughter of a teacher who taught in one-room schoolhouses, and the daughter of two physicians. Her father spent his early childhood in Denmark under Nazi occupation. He came to this country in 1955 and subsequently served as a Captain and surgeon in the US Army.
In early adulthood, Dupont found herself a single mother with two small children, no health insurance, and grim job prospects. She returned to school, completing bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in history at the University of Kentucky. But the vulnerability she felt in those years—managing as a single parent, struggling to make ends meet, and worried about her family getting sick–helped open her eyes to the plight of many suffering Kentuckians. For her, these difficult circumstances were temporary. But for many, such conditions are a way of life because systemic obstacles hold them back.
Dupont takes great inspiration from her E.K.U. students, who often pursue their education with dogged determination under trying circumstances. She is especially gratified to mentor many young people planning careers in education, and her former students now work, serve, and teach in every corner of the Commonwealth. Dupont regards her work with students as a calling, and she is proud to help shape Kentucky’s future by investing in the young people who will one day lead our state. Now she seeks to bring her passion, life experience, and professional competence to Frankfort and give a voice to Kentuckians who have not been heard.
Carolyn Dupont has enjoyed a successful career as an educator at Eastern Kentucky University, where she has taught for 15 years. Family stories of survival during hard times sparked her curiosity about the past and nurtured her love of history, her chosen discipline. She is the great-granddaughter of an illiterate Texas farmer, the granddaughter of a teacher who taught in one-room schoolhouses, and the daughter of two physicians. Her father spent his early childhood in Denmark under Nazi occupation. He came to this country in 1955 and subsequently served as a Captain and surgeon in the US Army.
In early adulthood, Dupont found herself a single mother with two small children, no health insurance, and grim job prospects. She returned to school, completing bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in history at the University of Kentucky. But the vulnerability she felt in those years—managing as a single parent, struggling to make ends meet, and worried about her family getting sick–helped open her eyes to the plight of many suffering Kentuckians. For her, these difficult circumstances were temporary. But for many, such conditions are a way of life because systemic obstacles hold them back.
Dupont takes great inspiration from her E.K.U. students, who often pursue their education with dogged determination under trying circumstances. She is especially gratified to mentor many young people planning careers in education, and her former students now work, serve, and teach in every corner of the Commonwealth. Dupont regards her work with students as a calling, and she is proud to help shape Kentucky’s future by investing in the young people who will one day lead our state. Now she seeks to bring her passion, life experience, and professional competence to Frankfort and give a voice to Kentuckians who have not been heard.
A first-rate education system is the surest pathway to progress for Kentucky, and Carolyn places it at the top of her agenda. Education is the best jobs program around and the number one driver of wage growth. By investing in education once again, we can attract new businesses that pay family-supporting wages, improve our local and state economy, and reduce Kentucky’s incarceration rate. Every dollar we invest in public education is a wise investment that will pay huge dividends in the long-term.
As an educator herself, Carolyn has seen firsthand the devastating impact on students and institutions when the state cuts and underfunds education, as has happened over the last 12 years. We must invest again in students, teachers’ salaries, teachers’ pensions, classrooms, and vocational and higher education. We must also expand early childhood education.
Our teachers are first-rate professionals and we must treat them as such. The attacks on them by politicians carrying water for for-profit charter schools have been a disgrace.
When it comes to healthcare, Carolyn will protect the very real gains Kentucky has made. To begin, she will preserve coverage for pre-existing conditions and work to get the cost of medicine down. To help reduce the cost of prescription medicines like insulin, Carolyn supports allowing the state Health and Family Services Cabinet to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. She also supports eliminating Kentucky’s PBM – the Pharmaceutical Benefits Managers. PBMs act as middlemen between drug companies and pharmacies, taking hundreds of millions of tax dollars every year. We can entrust our state Health & Family Services Cabinet with that job and use the savings to lower drug prices.
Finally, Carolyn understands the centrality of our county health departments to public health. These important community agencies will better serve us all when they can restore services cut because of increased pension obligations. The coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the necessity of a strong, well-functioning public health system, including well-funded county public health departments.
Kentucky needs new economic strategies to grow and thrive as a community and commonwealth. Old economic policies—giving tax breaks to large corporations that offer low-wage jobs—have failed us. In far too many cases, these tax breaks simply deplete our state’s limited revenues, rather than providing real economic gains. We must be more selective, offering tax breaks only to companies that provide proven positive returns on our investment.
Small and medium sized businesses are the backbone of our 21st-century economy, and that’s where we should focus. Today’s companies want good schools, an educated workforce, and communities with a high quality of life. It is also imperative that we enforce our labor laws, so that the plight of Kentucky’s Black Jewel miners never happens to another miner.
A strong economy requires a strong transportation and infrastructure system, because safe roads and bridges are literally a matter of life and death. As our community continues growing, investment in our transportation and infrastructure systems must keep pace. Representative Russ Meyer, State Senator Tom Buford, and our local city and county officials have all worked together to maximize investments in our local transportation and infrastructure system. Carolyn will continue working with leaders across the aisle to build a stronger transportation network and infrastructure grid.
Carolyn is a uniter, not a divider. She believes that our shared values matter more than our differences and she rejects hyper-partisanship. Many people in today’s political arena seem to have forgotten how much we share as Kentuckians and as Americans, but Carolyn has always chosen to focus on our commonalities. She brings respect, goodwill, and decency to our public discourse. The good of our community requires no less.
Carolyn Dupont is pro-life. She believes in protecting, defending, and supporting life in the fullest sense and at every stage of human development. Her stance not only includes opposition to abortion, but also support for families that will help them give their kids the best possible start in life.
Often ignored in the conversation about abortion, 41.9% of Kentucky babies were born to single mothers in 2018. Single parenthood is the most significant driver of poverty. Carolyn believes a genuine, comprehensive pro-life policy that extends beyond birth will reduce both the number of abortions and the number of single-parent births. Carolyn will promote strategies to reduce single parenthood.
Carolyn also supports policies that will help more struggling families with small children. These policies include better funding and support for our county health departments, so that they can continue to offer the full range of health services—especially for infants and mothers. Carolyn‘s pro-life policies also include eliminating Kentucky’s childcare deserts, raising the reimbursement rates for the Childcare Assistance Program, and expanding public preschool.
Carolyn Dupont is a gun owner and a dues-paying member of the NRA. Carolyn is a strong supporter of our Constitution and Bill of Rights – including the Second Amendment. Every year, she enjoys teaching the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in her classes at EKU. When it comes to the Second Amendment and protecting gun owners’ rights, there are two major differences between Carolyn and her opponent: Carolyn won’t pander for votes on this issue – or any other. And unlike her opponent, Carolyn believes our state capitol, our courthouses and our public schools should be gun-free zones.
A first-rate education system is the surest pathway to progress for Kentucky, and Carolyn places it at the top of her agenda. Education is the best jobs program around and the number one driver of wage growth. By investing in education once again, we can attract new businesses that pay family-supporting wages, improve our local and state economy, and reduce Kentucky’s incarceration rate. Every dollar we invest in public education is a wise investment that will pay huge dividends in the long-term.
As an educator herself, Carolyn has seen firsthand the devastating impact on students and institutions when the state cuts and underfunds education, as has happened over the last 12 years. We must invest again in students, teachers’ salaries, teachers’ pensions, classrooms, and vocational and higher education. We must also expand early childhood education.
Our teachers are first-rate professionals and we must treat them as such. The attacks on them by politicians carrying water for for-profit charter schools have been a disgrace.
When it comes to healthcare, Carolyn will protect the very real gains Kentucky has made. To begin, she will preserve coverage for pre-existing conditions and work to get the cost of medicine down. To help reduce the cost of prescription medicines like insulin, Carolyn supports allowing the state Health and Family Services Cabinet to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. She also supports eliminating Kentucky’s PBM – the Pharmaceutical Benefits Managers. PBMs act as middlemen between drug companies and pharmacies, taking hundreds of millions of tax dollars every year. We can entrust our state Health & Family Services Cabinet with that job and use the savings to lower drug prices.
Finally, Carolyn understands the centrality of our county health departments to public health. These important community agencies will better serve us all when they can restore services cut because of increased pension obligations. The coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the necessity of a strong, well-functioning public health system, including well-funded county public health departments.
Kentucky needs new economic strategies to grow and thrive as a community and commonwealth. Old economic policies—giving tax breaks to large corporations that offer low-wage jobs—have failed us. In far too many cases, these tax breaks simply deplete our state’s limited revenues, rather than providing real economic gains. We must be more selective, offering tax breaks only to companies that provide proven positive returns on our investment.
Small and medium sized businesses are the backbone of our 21st-century economy, and that’s where we should focus. Today’s companies want good schools, an educated workforce, and communities with a high quality of life. It is also imperative that we enforce our labor laws, so that the plight of Kentucky’s Black Jewel miners never happens to another miner.
A strong economy requires a strong transportation and infrastructure system, because safe roads and bridges are literally a matter of life and death. As our community continues growing, investment in our transportation and infrastructure systems must keep pace. Representative Russ Meyer, State Senator Tom Buford, and our local city and county officials have all worked together to maximize investments in our local transportation and infrastructure system. Carolyn will continue working with leaders across the aisle to build a stronger transportation network and infrastructure grid.
Carolyn is a uniter, not a divider. She believes that our shared values matter more than our differences and she rejects hyper-partisanship. Many people in today’s political arena seem to have forgotten how much we share as Kentuckians and as Americans, but Carolyn has always chosen to focus on our commonalities. She brings respect, goodwill, and decency to our public discourse. The good of our community requires no less.
Carolyn Dupont is pro-life. She believes in protecting, defending, and supporting life in the fullest sense and at every stage of human development. Her stance not only includes opposition to abortion, but also support for families that will help them give their kids the best possible start in life.
Often ignored in the conversation about abortion, 41.9% of Kentucky babies were born to single mothers in 2018. Single parenthood is the most significant driver of poverty. Carolyn believes a genuine, comprehensive pro-life policy that extends beyond birth will reduce both the number of abortions and the number of single-parent births. Carolyn will promote strategies to reduce single parenthood.
Carolyn also supports policies that will help more struggling families with small children. These policies include better funding and support for our county health departments, so that they can continue to offer the full range of health services—especially for infants and mothers. Carolyn‘s pro-life policies also include eliminating Kentucky’s childcare deserts, raising the reimbursement rates for the Childcare Assistance Program, and expanding public preschool.
Carolyn Dupont is a gun owner and a dues-paying member of the NRA. Carolyn is a strong supporter of our Constitution and Bill of Rights – including the Second Amendment. Every year, she enjoys teaching the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in her classes at EKU. When it comes to the Second Amendment and protecting gun owners’ rights, there are two major differences between Carolyn and her opponent: Carolyn won’t pander for votes on this issue – or any other. And unlike her opponent, Carolyn believes our state capitol, our courthouses and our public schools should be gun-free zones.
