Ken Upchurch

Kenneth Upchurch (born June 4, 1969) is an insurance agent with Upchurch Insurance and Financial services. He was the owner publisher of the Monticello Stage, a community newspaper[1] in Monticello in Wayne County, Kentucky, who is a Republican member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from District 52, which encompasses Wayne, McCreary, and a portion of Pulaski counties in the south-central portion of the state. Upchurch held this seat from January 1999 to December 2010 and then returned after a two-year hiatus to the position early in 2013.[2]

Upchurch is a son of Martin L. Upchurch of Monticello and the former Barbara Jackson (1948–2013). He and his wife, Melissa, have a daughter, Chelsea Nelson Thompson and a son Jackson.[1] He has two brothers, Keith Upchurch of Monticello and Timothy Upchurch of Lexington, Kentucky. His maternal grandfather is the Reverend James Howard Jackson of Mt. Orab, Ohio.[3] Upchurch received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Eastern Kentucky University. At EKU, he was the student body president and an automatic member of the university board of regents.[1] He is a member of the Elk Spring Valley Baptist Church in Monticello.[2][4]

In his first race for the House, buoyed by a large vote in Wayne County, Upchurch won the Republican nomination over three opponents by a margin of some seven hundred votes.[5] In the general election, he defeated Democrat Arthur J. Bolze of Somerset by a wide margin, 8,505 (75.7 percent) to 2,736 (24.3 percent)[6] As a legislator, Upchurch developed a reputation for his support of small business and agriculture. In 2002, his colleagues elected him as the House Republican whip, a position which he filled for two terms and helped to craft the state budget.[1] He did not seek a seventh two-year term in 2010 and was succeeded by fellow Republican, Sara Beth Gregory, a lawyer from Monticello. Instead Upchurch was defeated in a bid for Wayne County Judge-Executive.[7] After just two years in the state House, Gregory won a special election to the Kentucky State Senate in December 2012 to succeed long-term State Senate President David L. Williams of Burkesville in Cumberland County.[8] Upchurch won back the seat that he had vacated barely two years earlier, when he defeated Democrat Harvey Shearer, also of Monticello in a low-turnout special election held on February 12, 2013. The leadership of both parties selected Upchurch and Shearer as their nominees.[9]