Congressional candidates meet Monday at ECTC

Candidates seeking an open seat in Congress will meet Monday evening in a forum at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. The 2nd Congressional District stretches from Owensboro to Bowling Green and southern Jefferson County. It includes 22 counties, including LaRue.

State Sens. Brett Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, and David Boswell, D-Owensboro, meet in an event staged by The News-Enterprise and co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters. It is open to the public. Guthrie, 44, has served in the state Senate since 1998 in a district that includes Warren and Butler counties. He serves as vice president of Trace Die Cast, a manufacturing company in Bowling Green owned by his family. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served in the Army as a field artillery officer with the 101st Airborne. Guthrie also earned a master's degree in public and private management from Yale University. He and his wife, Beth, have three children.

Boswell, 58, was elected to four terms in the state House of Representatives beginning in 1978. He then served as state commissioner of agriculture and has been in the state Senate since 1991. Although a Democrat, he describes himself as pro-life and pro-guns in his teleivsion commercials. A graduate of Owensboro Catholic High School, he attended Brescia College and Western Kentucky University. Boswell and his wife, Sandi, have two sons. It begins at 6 p.m. Monday in the college's Science Auditorium. It comes just a week after the candidates met in a debate telecast on KET.

The House seat came open when incumbent Republican Ron Lewis of Cecilia announced just before the filing deadline that he would not seek re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives.