Meet Robby Mills, the Kentucky GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor

Kentucky state Sen. Robby Mills, now the Kentucky Republican Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor in 2023, has a well-documented history of attacking teachers and public education.

In 2023, Mills sponsored a bill that aimed to restrict labor organizations, including teachers unions, from using payroll deductions to collect dues from their members.

The text of the bill specifically barred all public employers from helping labor organizations to collect dues unless they represented police, firefighters or correctional officers. Public employers or labor unions caught violating the law could be subject to fines of up to $1,000 per each act of violation and each day of violation.

That bill became law over Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto, in which he noted it could negatively impact other sectors in Kentucky, potentially costing transit agencies millions in federal funds by preventing them from complying with federal labor laws.

In 2018, Mills supported a cut to teachers’ pensions contained in a rider added to a bill that dealt with wastewater services. The legislation would have moved new teachers from a defined-benefits pension plan to one that combined features of pensions and retirement plans, a change Kentucky teachers opposed. The bill was signed by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin but was ultimately struck down by the Kentucky Supreme Court on the grounds that lawmakers had not had sufficient time to review it.

Mills has a poor record on voting rights as well. He introduced a restrictive voter ID law in 2020, opposed extending absentee voting during Kentucky’s primary elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic later that year, and in 2022 co-sponsored a law further restricting the types of identification that may be used for voting. Both the 2020 bill and the 2022 bill became law when Republicans in the Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s vetoes.

The state senator has also waded into controversial culture war issues. He’s supported legislation restricting how teachers in classrooms can talk about racism; pushed a ban on trans kids playing on sports teams that align with their identities; and was a sponsor of Kentucky’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors

In discussing a potential ban on gender-affirming care as far back as 2020, Mills compared such care to female genital mutilation, saying, “It’s a parent that is doing a medical procedure to a young child that is brutal.”

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee for governor, announced Mills as his running mate in July. According to the Associated Press, Cameron called Mills a “rock-ribbed conservative” and said he “was the first person in Frankfort to sound the alarm about radical gender ideology.”

Recent polls have shown Beshear and Democratic Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman with a slight lead over Cameron and Mills. Election day in Kentucky is Nov. 7. Voters must register, or update their registration, by Oct. 10, and those who wish to vote by mail must request an absentee ballot by Oct. 24. The state also offers no-excuse early voting from Thursday, Nov. 2, through Saturday, Nov. 4, and allows early voting with an excuse from Wednesday, Oct. 25, through Wednesday, Nov. 1.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.