A series of moments led the former educator to the ballot, she says, and a combination of factors led to Election Day.

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. - She won by nearly 2,000 votes, and she says she wasn’t surprised.

Sarah Cole McIntosh, a former Jefferson County school board member and longtime education professional, unseated 14-year incumbent Republican Julie Raque Adams in Senate District 36. I spoke with her less than a week after Election Day about how she ended up on the ballot, what she thinks drove the result, and how she plans to work in Frankfort.

McIntosh says no single moment led her to run. It was a series of them, starting in the classroom, where she kept finding herself volunteering for the next committee. She said she wanted to be part of the conversations driving change in her school.

She later served as a parent representative on a school council and was asked to run for school board. Around the time she was elected to the board, she began working for the Kentucky Department of Education. Over a 25-year career, she says, she has worked in the classroom, in state government and on the school board.

Then, last November, the local Democratic Party texted her asking whether she had time the following week to talk about the upcoming legislative elections. She assumed they wanted help with candidate prep.

“But that wasn’t the ask,” she said.

What made it easy to say yes, she told me, was her own experience trying to reach Sen. Julie Raque Adams. During her school board years, McIntosh says, she reached out to the senator more than once about alternative education and dropout prevention. She cited a rise in youth violence in Louisville, including 11-year-olds being arrested for carjackings, and the closure of the Jefferson County Youth Center. She says she had concrete ideas for JCPS and the state to work together.

“I got no response,” she said. “If she wouldn’t even meet with me as a school board member, who else was she not meeting with? What other phone calls was she not responding to, or constituents was she not representing?”