Draft:Zach Dembo

• Comment: Zero indication of meeting Wikipedia's notability criteria. Please see the prior comment: "We normally view coverage of a candidate, unless especially prominent, as being relatively routine." If he wins the election, then he will get an article. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 23:23, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: We normally view coverage of a candidate, unless especially prominent, as being relatively routine. Do you have any sources of him pre-campaign? Jishara (please ping upon response) (talk) 16:53, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

---

Zach Dembo (born December 3, 1985) is a former teacher, Navy veteran, and federal prosecutor who most recently served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in Lexington, Kentucky, on behalf of the United States Departmnet of Justice until his resignation in 2025.

Dembo is currently the Democratic nominee for Kentucky's 6th congressional district.

Early life, career, and education

Dembo was born December 3, 1985, and raised in Lexington. His mother is from Finchville, Kentucky, and comes from seven generations of Kentucky farmers.  His father grew up on Long Island and moved to Kentucky to teach at the University of Kentucky.

He graduated from Stanford University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. After university, Dembo moved to the Mississippi Delta as a corps member in the Teach For America program, where he taught 8th grade English in Greenville, Mississippi, from 2007 to 2009.

After Teach For America, Dembo enrolled in the University of Michigan Law School and received his Juris Doctor in 2012. He then commissioned into the Navy as an officer in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, where he handled a wide array of legal tasks, including helping sailors and Marines, for five years.

After receiving his honorable discharge from active duty, Dembo became a federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice in 2017, serving as a line prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division under the first Trump Administration. He served in that position until March 2020, when he accepted a position as Andy Beshear's Policy Advisor and was then promoted to Legislative Director in 2021. He then returned to federal law enforcement as a prosecutor in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Between 2016 and 2025, he prosecuted at least 38 police officers, prison, and jail guards and a juvenile detention officer accused of abusing their power, with the cases he was assigned resulting in 35 convictions and three acquittals.

Dembo says he resigned from 11 years of federal service after witnessing what he described as "the corruption and politicization of the Department of Justice."

2026 congressional campaign

Dembo announced his entry into the 6th district Democratic primary on July 17, 2025. A first time candidate, Dembo won the Democratic nomination on May 19, 2026, carrying 15 of the 16 counties in the district.

Dembo has campaigned as a public servant who is tackling the cost of corruption he saw as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice before he resigned and has put out a 10-point anti-corruption plan. In late April through late-May, he was endorsed by the National Education Association, former Lexington mayor Jim Gray, the last Democrat to represent the seat Ben Chandler, and Governor Andy Beshear, among others. In particular, Governor Beshear took an active role in the campaign and worked closely with Dembo to flip the seat.