“The most important piece of furniture in our home was the kitchen table.”
Thus began Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft’s speech in a tightly-packed back room on the second floor of The Hive Restaurant in Erlanger last week.
The event was a stop on Craft’s “Empty Chair” tour, and the candidate used the event to discuss some of the issues in her campaign, which describes her as “Christian. Conservative. Proud Kentuckian.” A brief Q&A segment followed her speech.
Craft’s Speech
“[The table] is where I learned very early on from watching my mom and dad–and from listening and having those conversations–that if you worked hard and you kept God at the center of your table and you did right by your neighbors, meaning that you lifted your neighbors up, then anything in life is possible,” Craft said.
Craft declared her candidacy in September. Before running for governor, she worked as the ambassador to Canada from 2017 to 2019. She was the first woman to hold the position. Later, she served as the American ambassador to the United Nations from 2019 to 2021. She also served as an alternate delegate to the United Nations under the Bush Administration in 2007.
After a brief introduction, in which she described her early life in Barren County, Kentucky, she spoke about issues.
Drug addiction and the enforcement of drug trafficking played an outsized role in much of the speech.
“We have to get a grip on this drug crisis,” Craft said. “This is a number one crisis in America, and it is the number one crisis in Kentucky. And I have lived it.”
She discussed the struggles that many Kentuckians have confronted with fentanyl and heroin addiction, including some she claimed her own daughter had faced.
“I know you’ve seen my ad on the empty chair,” she said. “I’ve had that empty chair, even when that child was there sitting in that chair, because she really wasn’t there. She was high. I had the empty chair when she was in rehab. I had that empty chair when she was in juvenile detention.”
She did not identify her daughter by name but used her story as a jumping-off point to discuss drug policy.
She hoped to step up enforcement on traffickers and producers, both locally and internationally. She placed much of the blame for the fentanyl market in the United States on China.
“There’s not one family that I have sat with across this state that has not felt or known someone that has felt the pain of an empty chair,” she said. “And we have to make certain that we call out China and, most importantly, that we engage with the governors of other states to stop the fentanyl from coming into their states which then travels to Kentucky.”
A 2020 report from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) identifies China as “the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States.”
Craft has taken a confrontational attitude toward China in the past. During her time with the United Nations, the Chinese Communist Party officially sanctioned her after she met with and complimented former Taiwanese President Cài Yīngwén. Craft has also been critical of China’s human rights abuses and its incursions into the South China Sea.
In addition to increased enforcement, Craft spoke of the need to create more pathways to reintegrate people charged with drug crimes into society upon release.
“We’re going to give them a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance, a tenth chance,” she said. “We’re going to make certain that before they leave that they are skilled.”
She described a visit she made to an unspecified detention facility in the region to illustrate what she saw as shortcomings in the way the state currently reintegrates people found guilty of drug-related crimes:
“I went into one of the women’s cells,” Craft said. “There were about 20 women in this tiny cell. So I was just talking to them, and two of them were getting ready to be released on their misdemeanor charges. But they didn’t want to leave.”
“Why don’t you want to leave?” she asked the women rhetorically.
“They didn’t have a place to go,” she said. “Not only did they not have a place to go, they didn’t have an ID, they didn’t have a resume because they have such large gaps in their life, most of which they don’t remember. And they can’t afford the fee to have their misdemeanor expunged.”
“Shame on us,” she added.
To that end, she said, “We need to partner with businesses, partner with other individuals, with our churches,” she said. “We’ve really got to have a full court press on this. We’ve got to get everybody engaged–the coaches, mentors, everyone–to make certain that we help these young adults or adults when they come out.”
Craft’s thoughts on drug policy dovetailed with her stances on economics.
“We’ve got to really build up our small and medium size businesses,” she said.
She expounded on the issue by saying, “We’ve got to build our students to where they are part of the workforce, and even people that are reentering the workforce.”
“We’ve got to make certain that our communities are thriving to attract industry,” she continued. “And we’ve got to make certain that we focus on what is our abundant natural resource, our energy industry, our coal industry, so that we provide low-cost utilities for industries that are coming in and looking and comparing us to Indiana and Tennessee, comparing us to our surrounding states.”
Kelly Craft is married to Joe Craft, the president and CEO of Alliance Resources, one of the largest coal producers in the country. Joe Craft has donated to candidates on both sides of the political aisle over the years, including at least $1 million to former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee. He has also made numerous philanthropic donations to universities and other institutions.
“We’ve got to make smart economic decisions for Kentucky, and we need to make certain that the Biden-Beshear administration does not eradicate coal by 2030,” she said in reference to Biden Administration’s stated goal to “reach 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.”
“But at the same time China is the number one producer of coal-fired power plants because they understand the importance of low-cost utilities,” she said.
China’s coal use is well documented and has drawn criticism from environmental groups.
“They understand the importance of manufacturing because that’s going to lower their output. They will take our place as a superpower if we don’t focus on what we have that’s abundant in Kentucky in order to produce more and keep our workers here.”
Finally, Craft discussed her criticisms of Kentucky’s education system and addressed how she hoped to change it.
“We want a better future for our children and our grandchildren,” she said.
From there, she talked about the teachers in her life, including her mother, who was a home economics teacher at Glasgow High School. Craft then addressed the issue of parental rights in education.
“I want to make certain that parents have the rights to be involved with their child’s education, and that kids have the right to have their parents involved in their education,” she said. “We want these children to have skills and knowledge. We want them to learn the ABCs, not critical race theory, not to be sexualized. We want them not to have the left, woke ideologies.”
This comment was in reference to controversies surrounding the way students are taught about racism and LGBTQ+ issues in schools, which has led to backlash among some conservative leaders.
Then she made a promise: “On my first couple days of office–I’m gonna double down, and I’m gonna say it again–I’m going to dismantle the Kentucky Department of Education and the Kentucky Board of Education.”
This elicited applause from the audience members.
She went on, “Furthermore, we need to make certain that we demand transparency.”
“So we have to come down really hard on the Department of Education on our state government budget and find out where are the funds going because we deserve to know our children must have every opportunity to reach their full potential,” she said.
After that, she added a point of clarity.
“We’re so quick about blaming teachers. It’s not the teachers,” she said. “They have a passion to teach our children. My mother loved her students. We need to provide all the resources and, going back to the to the funds, make certain that that funding goes to the classroom and our teachers that that they teach our most important commodity: our children.”
She concluded her points about education with her hopes to expand the options for post-secondary education and her desire to introduce career-planning instruction to students early in high school so that they can begin strategizing for their future careers early.
Q&A
The first question came from Kenton County Commissioner Jon Draud, who was sitting in the audience.
“You touched a lot of my career because I was a teacher, school superintendent, legislator for 10 years and commissioner of education,” Daud said.
“I consider myself an educator and not a politician,” he continued. “Beshear has the KEA [Kentucky Education Association] locked up, and he’s got all these educators supporting him. That’s how he got elected, and so he’s been very pro-teacher as a result of that. So are you going to get any high ground with that relationship?”
The KEA is an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teaching union in the country. They have made public statements in support of Gov. Andy Beshear.
“Well, first of all, I’m all about whatever helps the child,” Craft replied, “and whatever helps the child is whatever helps the teachers.”
“We have to differentiate between the union, which is what Beshear has locked up. He doesn’t have the teachers locked up because he’s been promising teachers a raise since day one,” she added before saying, “It’s funny that he’s just now focused on it and it’s an election year.”
The last part of her answer was in reference to Governor Beshear’s Education First Plan, which the governor’s office first proposed in October and calls for a 5% raise for teachers and other school workers across the state.
A woman in the front row, who asked not to be named, wanted to know how Craft planned to tackle mental health issues.
“Mental health in all of this country is in dire straits,” she said. She also believed that drug problems and mental health problems mutually reinforced one another.
“We will never have another shutdown,” Craft responded. “As long as I’m governor, we will not be having a shutdown, but we have had mental health issues with our young adults before.”
She then referenced her admiration for Canadian clinical psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, and echoed his suspicions on young girls’ use of technology during the COVID quarantine measures.
“It’s bad enough that they’re on these devices, and they can say just the ugliest things to one another,” she said. “But during the COVID shutdown, there was nobody to even monitor, and they were on them all the time.”
She feared that overuse of smart devices had led to deteriorating mental health among girls and could even be a precursor to drug addiction. She concluded that mental health was a “very important issue.”
The final comment of the event came from Kathleen Black in the front row.
“I came with the hopes of being able to thank you in person,” Ms. Black said.
She told Craft about her granddaughter, Alexandria, who was accepted to the Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics and who hopes to study radiology.
The Craft Academy was founded by Joe and Kelly Craft in 2015. It’s housed at Morehead State University and selects 146 high school juniors and seniors every year for enrollment into the academy. Most of their expenses, including tuition, are covered by donations from the Crafts themselves, who have contributed over $10 million to the program.
Black went on to describe her family situation. She and her husband have been raising Alexandria and her two siblings since the children were very young.
“My husband and I are on social security, and there’s no way in hell we could afford to send those kids to college,” she said with tears welling up in her eyes, “not a college like Morehead.”
“I wanted to thank,” Black said. “My kids will be somebody someday because of you and Joe.”
“I tell my husband this is what keeps us going,” Craft said.
Craft then went on to say that upon graduating from the Craft Academy, staff members in the program help the students research scholarships so that they can attend a college of their choice at reduced cost.
“We make up the difference in tuition, and we leave a little bit of debt so that they have ownership,” Craft said. “Even if it’s $5 a month that they pay, it gives them such ownership.”
Craft thanked Kathleen Black for sharing her story, and Mrs. Black thanked Craft in turn.
“First time I’ve ever met,” Craft said finally. “This was not something that was planned.”
For more information on current candidates for the Kentucky Governor’s seat, visit the Secretary of State’s website.
