State Rep. Ryan Dotson, R-Winchester, launched his Republican campaign for Congress on Tuesday night with a thunderous prayer calling on God and the voters to let him be the David who slays the Philistine giant Goliath.

“I do know this: I’ll fight. And when David fought the giant, he knocked him out, he cut his head off. I want to bring a trophy back to this district,” Dotson, a three-term state representative, told an audience of about 70 supporters at his campaign kickoff dinner at the Bluegrass Community and Technical College campus in Winchester.

Dotson said among his priorities in Congress would be codifying President Donald Trump’s far-reaching executive orders and Elon Musk’s federal government cuts made through the Department of Government Efficiency so they can’t easily be reversed in the future.

Also, Dotson said, he will fight “the woke madness” and “be a thorn in the side of everybody who’s got a D behind your name.”

“Washington, D.C., over the last several years has appeared off course,” Dotson said. “Since the days of (former President Barack) Obama, we have seen the spiraling out of control, the culture wars that has taken place, the cancel culture that is taking place in America, that you can’t speak freely without being canceled, you can’t tell someone how you really feel without being ostracized.

“And we’ve seen that Obama made it happen.”

Dotson hopes to win Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District in the 2026 election.

The incumbent, U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Mitch McConnell, who is not running for reelection next year.

The district represents 16 counties around Lexington. Although it has voted consistently Republican since Barr was first elected in 2012, nonpartisan election handicapper Sabato’s Crystal Ball on Tuesday shifted the 6th District from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican” based on a number of factors, including the arrival of a “credible” Democratic candidate, former three-term state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson of Lexington.

Dotson, 52, is a Pike County native who has spent most of his adult life in Winchester. He and his wife, Tresa, founded and operated several area businesses, including restaurants, a daycare and a roofing company. He’s also a Pentecostal church pastor who has made regular mission trips to foreign countries.

Taking an interest in politics, Dotson ran as a Democrat for the state Senate in 2010 and as a Republican for Clark County judge-executive in 2014, losing each time. He finally prevailed in 2020 by unseating incumbent state Rep. Les Yates of Winchester in the Republican primary and winning that year’s general election.

In the General Assembly, Dotson quickly established himself as a vocal social-conservative.

He helped lead the fight in 2022 for a bill to ban transgender women from women’s sports at public schools and universities, overcoming Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto.

Two years later, he successfully sponsored a bill that struck down local ordinances in Lexington and Louisville that protected the right of tenants to use federal low-income housing vouchers, such as Section 8 vouchers. Again, his bill overcame a veto from Beshear.

Standing with landlords, Dotson said his 2024 bill would “safeguard our citizens from being forced to lease their properties to the government for those on assistance programs, unless the property owner chooses to.”

Nearly a dozen Republican members of the legislature spoke in support of Dotson’s congressional campaign at Tuesday’s dinner, as did David Walls, executive director of the conservative Family Foundation. They said Dotson was a fighter who forced fiercely conservative bills through the General Assembly even when some Republican leaders were hesitant, fearing a political backlash from moderate voters.

The lawmakers described praying with Dotson at the Capitol, sometimes on the House steps before they went into session, as they sought guidance for legislation to ban abortion, transgender health care and gender-neutral bathrooms.

“I honestly think Ryan goes to bed at night and lays there thinking about standing up against the woke ideology that we have in Frankfort and in D.C. We have a lot of craziness,” said state Sen. Greg Elkins, R-Winchester.

When it was his turn to speak, Dotson warned the crowd about the risks of having “ungodly people in leadership.”

“But when the righteous are in rule, the people rejoice,” he said to enthusiastic applause. “I feel a mandate, I truly do.”

“There’s been times I get frustrated, I get bent out of shape, and I’ve stopped and said, ‘God, why am I even here?’ I go to my office, lock the door, and (said) to the Lord, ‘You need to show me.’ And he will speak to my heart, ‘You are holding back the darkness.’ And I will see a vision of the cloud, of a dark cloud just coming over the state of Kentucky. And I alone, with some of my colleagues, were standing there, holding back the darkness.”

Other than Dotson, several Central Kentucky Republicans reportedly are considering a run for Congress, including state Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe, R-Lexington; state Rep. Deanna Gordon, R-Richmond; state Rep. Matt Lockett, R-Nicholasville; and former state Senate GOP Leader Damon Thayer of Georgetown.

Several Democrats also are expected in their own contested primary, including two already declared: Stevenson, the former state representative from Lexington, and, as of Wednesday, former Lexington-Fayette Urban Council councilman David Kloiber, who ran for mayor of Lexington in 2022.

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