New Kentucky bills would bar naturalized citizens from holding office

A pair of bills introduced by Kentucky state Rep. Shane Baker (R-Somerset) would prohibit naturalized citizens and people with dual citizenship from holding public office in the state.

House Bill 186 would require candidates for several local offices, including county commissioners, mayors and board of education members, to be natural born citizens of the United States to hold office. The other bill, House Bill 259, proposes a constitutional amendment to add the natural born citizen requirement to nearly every office in the state, including governor, General Assembly and state Supreme Court.

HB 186 only requires a simple majority to pass in each chamber of the Republican-dominated legislature. Since HB 259 requires amending the state constitution, it would need a 2/3rds majority vote in each chamber and approval from voters.

Baker said his legislation would block naturalized citizens from taking Kentucky in a similar “direction” as New York, possibly referring to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani being a naturalized U.S. citizen.

“You can see the direction they’re trying to take New York, and the problems that are there are on the front burner there, and we don’t want to face those things in Kentucky,” Baker said. “We want to make sure to head things off before they get here.”

Baker’s legislation would also block several individuals who are already in office, including his fellow state Rep. Nima Kulkarni (D-Frankfort). Kulkarni was an immigration lawyer before she became the first Indian immigrant elected to the Kentucky state legislature in 2018; she moved to the U.S. when she was six years old. Kulkarni told Louisville Public Media that Baker’s bills will only alienate more people in Kentucky.

“These are just bills that divide communities for no real reason,” Kulkarni said. “They don’t have any actual bearing or impact on national security, on threats to our intelligence community, or anything like that.”

The bills echo a similar proposal introduced by Alabama state Sen. Donnie Chesteen (R-Geneva) last year.