Your Voice: Reader Objects to Our Candidate Filing Story

Submitted by Ronni Tallent

On January 10, 2026, WinCity Voices ran an arti­cle writ­ten by Randy Patrick detail­ing the Republican can­di­dates for KY 73 shar­ing three para­graphs on the can­di­dates and a pic­ture of Les Yates. However, the arti­cle shared only one sen­tence about the Democratic can­di­dates Rory Houlihan and Chelsea Kirk.

Rory Houlihan is known to us all as a sta­ple at Lowes for many years. A Florida trans­plant, Rory believes ser­vice is the great­est form of patri­o­tism. Rory sees him­self as a Christian mod­er­ate and hopes to appeal to vot­ers on both sides of the aisle. He is a firm believ­er in fund­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion and health­care and if elect­ed to the state leg­is­la­ture will, in his own words, look to find mod­er­ate bal­anced solu­tions for all Kentuckians.

Chelsea Kirk is excit­ed to offer her can­di­da­cy as the state rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Kentucky’s 73^rd House District. She brings core val­ues of peo­ple-first gov­er­nance, deep lis­ten­ing to con­stituents, and a pol­i­cy-over-par­ty per­spec­tive to our district.

Chelsea grew up in Bullitt County, KY and is the daugh­ter of a Marine Corp vet­er­an and a Nurse Practitioner. She was a 2006 Governor’s Scholar, and com­plet­ed her Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Kentucky in 2011. This is also where she met her hus­band, Anthony Schmidt.

After col­lege, Chelsea moved to Canada and com­plet­ed her Master’s Degree at the University of Western Ontario in 2013. She and her hus­band then moved to Seattle, WA, where they both spent the ear­ly part of their careers work­ing in the Technology sector.

In 2017, Chelsea and Anthony knew they want­ed to start their fam­i­ly, and so they returned to District 73 that year. Since then, Chelsea and Anthony have start­ed and grown a small soft­ware com­pa­ny and wel­comed two sons (ages 3 and 5).