Baesler, a tobacco farm owner with a law degree, is a former Lexington mayor and University of Kentucky basketball player who left the seat in 1998 for a losing Senate run.

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He grew up in Hazard, in southeastern Kentucky, and went to Transylvania University in Lexington.

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According to Daniel Fulks, an accounting professor at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky.

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"They could probably sell every bit they bring up here, " says Gary Palmer, an agriculture professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

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