Voters got a preview of the possible future of Campbell County leadership Friday as Judge/Executive Steve Pendery and challenger Alexandria Mayor Andy Schabell squared off in a debate ahead of the May 19 Republican primary.
The May 8 debate, put on by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, was only open to chamber members, but voters could watch the debate on Campbell Media.
The winner of the Republican primary will likely take office, with only independents (who file by June 2) or write-in candidates able to challenge them in November.
Judges/executive serve as the elected chief executive of a county’s government in Kentucky. Their primary responsibilities are to oversee daily operations, prepare the budget, manage personnel, and preside over the fiscal court – the county’s primary legislative body.
Incumbent Pendery has held office since 1998. Schabell has been the mayor of Alexandria since 2019 and previously served three terms on the city council.
Pendery won the coin toss and kicked off the debate by touting the county’s successes under his leadership for almost three decades.
He first talked about Campbell, Kenton and Boone’s investment of $28 million of federal money in a $180 million fiber optic internet project, which delivered connections to the door of every house across the region. Pendery also noted a regional project of replacing public radio systems for fire, police and emergency personnel use.
“In Campbell, there are currently $2.4 billion worth of projects, either recently completed or on the way,” Pendery said Friday. “That is over a 25% increase in the entire assessed valuation of Campbell County. Truly, things are going very well, and none of that happened by accident.”
Pendery also praised the county’s senior center, a portal giving citizens one place to go to pay all the occupational taxes that participating cities charge, and software that allows residents to look at every check the county writes and its budget on the county’s website.
Schabell began his opening remarks by going over his qualifications and highlighting the successes Alexandria has had during his tenure.
Aside from his role in government, Schabell is a former volunteer firefighter and a nationally registered emergency medical technician. He holds a bachelor’s degree in police administration from Eastern Kentucky University, and currently works as a corporate transportation manager at Darling Ingredients in Cold Spring.
Schabell said that for more than 25 years, he has worked in transportation and logistics, where he managed people, budgets, equipment, deadlines, contracts and real problems.
As the mayor of Alexandria, Schabell said he delivered balanced budgets and clean audits every single year. He said the city has also invested in infrastructure, improved services, lowered the tax rates, rebuilt the playground, added pickleball courts, and is currently building a new city building that will include a community center and police department.
“After nearly 28 years under the same leadership, I think it’s fair for voters to ask one simple question, ‘Are we really doing our best?” Schabell said. “Are we moving fast enough on roads, traffic, infrastructure, transparency, communication and regional fairness? Are we making sure Campbell County gets its fair share when regional decisions are made?”
He said the city live streams every city council meeting on Facebook and through Campbell Media and meeting agendas are posted publicly. Schabell said that allows residents to see what their government is doing, what decisions are being made and how their tax dollars are being handled.
LINK nky President and CEO Lacy Starling moderated the debate. Each candidate had 60 seconds to respond to each question.
Fiscal management
Pendery said the county has decreased the property rates, which he said is a reaction to property valuation assessments going up and the county trying to mitigate the effects of that for taxpayers.
“As for our thriftiness, we have tried, over the years and in recent history, to implement as many money-saving technologies and as many money-saving combinations of departments and agencies as we possibly could,” he said.
One of the specifics he named was the county utilizing a 360-degree AI-directed camera that feeds data about the roads back to the road department. It can be mounted on a car and driven around, and it will tell you what kind of condition the roads are in and provide advice on what repairs need to be made.
Schabell said that while Campbell County has lowered its property tax rate 13.6% over the last five years, Alexandria has lowered its 19.5%. He said that doesn’t mean someone’s tax bill is going down, and it doesn’t mean the city or county is taking in less money, and said he thinks it’s something to build on.
“We need to continue to look at ways we can save taxpayer money,” Schabell said. “That’s what I’ve done for eight years as mayor of Alexandria. We took a good, hard look at the very first year I was in here, every single line item in the budget, and that’s what I’ll do as the next judge/executive.”
Workforce
Schabell said for a long time, the perception of Campbell County is that it is a bedroom community, and everyone leaves to go to Boone, Kenton or Cincinnati for their jobs. He said there are places in Wilder and Newport where the county can actively advertise to bring companies in.
He said that while the county should market areas to bring companies in, the infrastructure has to match.
“We’re going to need to build our infrastructure around here,” Schabell said. “U.S. 27 can’t handle an extra 400 trucks a day, so we have to worry about all that goes into this as well.”
Pendery said that while economic development is something the county works very hard at, the idea that people leave Campbell County and go to downtown Cincinnati to work or across the other two counties to find the best jobs they are qualified for is a good thing, not a bad thing.
“Our economy actually extends well into Ohio, anywhere a 20-minute commute will take you, in fact, as a loop around our area, and it leads to more, not less income and more, not less wealth for our residents,” he said.
Infrastructure and growth
Pendery said his long-standing goal has been to provide economic development in the areas where it’s wanted and needed. He said that while a city like Newport is doing great when it comes to economic development, they have the assets to support that in terms of transportation and being near the river.
On the other hand, in the southern part of the county, Pendery said they are making record expenditures in water and sewer and making progress on transportation.
“Across a broad swath of southern Campbell County, they really don’t want the kind of development you have in the north end of the county anyway,” he said. “They nevertheless are having good growth.”
Pendery said that growth includes the industrial park project, near Tyson Foods, and alluded to the county working on a piece of property that it expects to sell soon that will yield a couple 100 jobs.
In Alexandria, the slogan is “Where the city meets the country,” and Schabell said he still believes that. He said it is vastly different from Newport, Bellevue and Dayton, and residents like it that way.
“The nice thing is you can live in the county and still access all the good things happening in Newport, Bellevue, Dayton, but I agree that you don’t want to put a whole lot of big buildings out in southern Campbell County,” Schabell said. “It’s not the right spot for it. We need to concentrate that on the northern end of the county, and I don’t believe that should come in any hindrance to the people living in South Campbell County.”
KY Route 536
Schabell said for as long as he can remember, the county has talked about the expansion of KY 536, which would connect southern Campbell County to Boone County. Ultimately, relieving traffic on U.S. 27.
He said expansion started in Boone, then Kenton and Campbell County is last. While Schabell said he can understand some of the reasons might be because Boone County has access to I-75, he would have loved to see an approach where all three counties were working on different pieces of it, what’s important to them, at the same time.
“That’s part of the regionalism discussion, where sometimes I believe we’re third in line, and we should push harder for that,” Schabell said.
Pendery said that the reason the project started at the interchange of I-75 in Boone County is that it would otherwise be a road to nowhere.
He said the big value for the funders of the project is the fact that the road is going to deliver people to the largest industrial park on I-75 between Canada and Cuba, and deliver people to the airport, where they’re going to hire 7,000 people in the next five years. He said the county received $35 million in the budget this House year and $10 million last year, and the Senate cut it back, he said, apparently due to influence from the Brent Spence Bridge project.
“Here’s what I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve been three times in the office of the United States Secretary of Transportation with the other two judges, and twice we came home with 10s of millions of dollars in grants from the federal government to pay for the interchange that has to kick this off in order to interest the state to pay for the rest of it.”
Housing
Practically speaking, Pendery said that since the county needs a workforce, it needs places for workers to live and residents’ kids and grandkids to live that are affordable.
One thing he said the county has done, along with Boone and Kenton, is commissioned a study that runs to 270 pages. Pendery said the county is already following through with the suggestions that were made.
A study of housing in Northern Kentucky has revealed troubling trends for housing in the region, with the largest need being for “workforce housing” for households earning between $15 and $25 per hour, with monthly housing costs between $500 and $1,500. The region needs about 3,000 more housing units to provide for people within that income range, according to the study. The demand for one- to two-bedroom rentals and owned properties consistently exceeds their supply, while supply for three and four-bedroom properties consistently exceeds demand. The study suggests that the region needs to build 6,650 housing units to support economic development in the next five years, which equates to 1,330 units per year. Read more here.
Understanding NKY’s housing shortage
“One of them has to do with the employment of the Catalytic Fund to do in a bigger way what they’ve already been doing for 13 years,” he said. “They produce 3,600 units of housing without a single loss, and what they’re doing is providing a layer of investment in the capital stack for projects that are considered too risky by banks.”
Schabell said housing is a major issue, and Alexandria is using the Ohio, Kentucky Indiana Regional Council of Governments information to look at what the population is, and he sits on the board of directors for Northern Kentucky Area Development District (which helped facilitate the housing study for the region), discussing housing with them.
Looking at Alexandria, Schabell said that 53% of the homes have only one or two people living in them, and 47% have more than three people, but the majority of the housing units are three and four-bedroom homes. He said the city is currently reviewing its comprehensive plan to allow room for smaller units.
“These are for people in the workforce,” Schabell said. “For my daughter who is 25, my daughter who’s 19, and for maybe my parents, who are in their 70s and looking to downsize from their four-bedroom home.”
Northern Kentucky University
Schabell said both he and Pendery were at the last Highland Heights city council meeting, where they were discussing its budget and the impacts that the Chase Law school has on leaving Campbell County. He said the city was losing at least $100,000 a year in payroll taxes.
He said that doesn’t include the people coming in to get gas and get food, etc.
“It’s going to be a major impact on Campbell County, and I believe the judge/executive should work very hard with our state leadership to make sure that NKU stays in Campbell County,” Schabell said. “It is vitally important to do everything we can to support them and make them successful. NKU’s success will be Campbell County’s success.”
Pendery said NKU is the county’s largest employer by far, and it is an economic engine that serves the entire region with its workforce.
As far as Chase Law School leaving NKU’s campus for Covington, Pendery said he has a habit of praising in public and criticizing in private, and that’s what he did. He said he was not happy about the move.
“That legislative cycle, there was almost $200 million on the table for NKU, and I’ll let you use your imagination as to the rest of the reasons why I wouldn’t speak up in public about that, because I’m not that kind of guy,” Pendery said. “That would be to improve my political standing, and it’s not going to be constructive for the relationship with NKU.”
Regionalism and Campbell County’s interests
Coinciding with the conversation on NKU, Schabell said regionalism is important, and the county needs to work with Boone, Kenton and Pendleton counties, but he said it should never come at a loss for Campbell County residents.
“I would get along with the other judge/executives, work closely with them, but at the end of the day, if it is not an improvement for Campbell County residents, we’re not going to do it,” Schabell said. “It has to help Campbell County residents. Campbell County should always be lifted up and never be left behind when it comes to regionalism.”
Pendery said that the county watches very carefully to see that there’s no prejudice exhibited in the dealings among the three counties. He said it is very rare that things aren’t worked out satisfactorily for all sides.
“You know, I mentioned the thing at NKU, the president, the administration, and everybody on the board would tell you that they made the best deal for the university, and you can’t get in the way productively with your largest employer in a case like that,” Pendery said.
Pendery said that to say that the county doesn’t get its fair share is just not true. As an example, he said he saw something about how Boone County gets $300 million dollars for federal roads, but they also have three times the center line road distances (measures the physical length of a road from start to finish) than Campbell County. On state roads this year, he said Campbell County got $26.5 million dollars more than Boone County. Pendery said people have to look at things a little more carefully.
Cooperation between counties
Pendery said the radio project, where Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties replaced repeater towers (elevated, automated radio stations), required three states and five counties to work together.
“He’s [Schabell] not going to do that, but apparently, the guy [Chet Hand] who’s running against Gary [Moore] wants to follow every Boone County dollar and put a fence around the county and withdraw from agencies that he thinks are getting more Boone County money,” Pendery said. “That doesn’t work. $28 million got the three counties a $180 million project that they would not have gotten a deal on their own, spending their own money.”
Schabell agreed and said that without cooperation between Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, Northern Kentucky would be total chaos.
“I think at the end of the day, you can always advocate for your own residents and make sure that you don’t come out on the short end of the stick,” he said.
Public safety and federal funding
Pendery said the county has a nationally recognized approach that has led to an 81% drop in fatal overdoses. Fatal overdoses in Campbell County dropped from 54 in 2020 to 10 in 2025.
He said that if federal funding were to be cut, the county would receive money through the opioid settlement, which was $3 million allotted by the state.
“We have a plan that was devised by 400 people in a hotel ballroom, a spreadsheet that talks about everything from interdiction and detection all the way through all the different treatment options to aftercare,” Pendery said. “All the gaps have been filled by somebody, and that was the whole point of the exercise.”
Schabell said the opioid crisis was a bad time for the country and the state, and just because it’s over, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen again. He said Alexandria’s officers are part of the Northern Kentucky Regional Drug Strike Force. He said the city works hard to keep drugs off the streets. Schabell said the city works with the Northern Kentucky Area Development District to talk about the money coming in from the opioid settlement.
“It’s just very important to stay up on that,” Schabell said. “If the federal government doesn’t fund that, as they should, the county government should step in and work hard to find other sources to bring that money in.”
Tourism and parks
Under his leadership, Schabell said, the Alexandria Community Park has upgraded the playground equipment, added pickleball courts, stocked the park’s lake with over 6,000 fish every year and is putting in a skate park.
“AJ Jolly Park is free to get into, but there’s really no water in the lake. You can’t go camping,” he said. “I don’t believe that just cutting the entrance fee to AJ Jolly Park was going to do enough to bring new people into it. We have to advertise it. We have to advertise it outside of Campbell County and in Cincinnati, Boone and Kenton counties.”
Schabell is referring to the $10 million AJ Jolly lake restoration project currently going on.
Pendery said MeetNKY does promote AJ Jolly Park, and so do the county’s two communications personnel. He said it is the largest county park in the state, and this season is going to be a sacrifice that everyone has to make, given the fact that parts of the lake are blocked with sediment.
“We’re making a virtue of necessity by using the time while the water’s drawn down to remove as much of the silt as we can get out of there, and hopefully it will not lose more than a year,” he said.
Transparency and accountability
Pendery said the county has something called “What’s Happening” which is published three times a year to let people know what’s going on. He said the county’s two communications specialists are distributing materials and making videos and posts online about what’s happening in Campbell County. As for the county’s cities, he said the county holds a mayor’s and administrators meeting to share what the county considers valuable and available across Northern Kentucky with all its cities.
“We have a thing called Open Gov, and you can literally pull up any check that we’ve written, look at all of our budgets, our financial records and go back many years in the process,” he said.
Schabell said that since he became mayor of Alexandria, he believes the city is the most transparent city government in Campbell County, maybe all of Northern Kentucky. Further, he said that the city’s Facebook page has over double the number of followers that the county has, which shows they are putting out the content people want.
“I’ve advertised my cell phone number, 859-242-1186. Contact me anytime,” Schabell said. “I got a text on the way here asking me if I supported the library tax. I said, ‘Absolutely, I do. I’m going to the library tonight.’ I don’t know if that’s the answer that they wanted, but that’s an answer that they got.”
Civility
Schabell said that the way he has conducted himself during this race will be how he conducts himself as a judge/executive.
“On the up and up, very transparent and completely factual,” he said. “I’m not here to say anything bad about where Campbell County has been, or what Campbell County has done. I’m looking for the future and how we can approach the future with a new vision and new energy.”
Pendery said that you can’t expect citizens to respect what you do if you have contentious meetings, personal attacks, and have no regard for the truth. He said that is the standard people need to expect from elected officials.
“I can’t watch TV about the national conversation,” Pendery said. “It’s revolting, and that sometimes happens at the state level as well. It’s no wonder that people don’t show up and vote when they have to sort their way through a lot of lies and exaggerations to try to get at the truth. You’ve got to watch three television stations run things through three fact checkers, and you’re still not sure that you know what’s going on.”
Leadership and vision
Schabell said that should he be elected to the judge/executive role, his first action of business would be to go line by line through the budget.
“We’re going to take a look at exactly how the county government is being run,” he said. “I know that there are things that I have absolutely no idea that this man [Pendery] does. I know that it happened when I became mayor. I didn’t know everything that was going on. We took a good, hard look at it.”
Schabell said an example of that is when he became mayor in Alexandria, the city had two full-time office clerks. He cut it down to one full-time and one part-time as the one clerk retired.
Pendery said that the timeline for getting something done in government is usually not short. He said what happens is, you have a lot of projects that have been underway, some of them for years, that need to be looked after.
One of those projects that Pendery said he will focus on is the workforce, more specifically, the housing that is necessary to provide people with a place to live, so Campbell County can attract them to the area.
“Those are big problems that everybody’s got to cooperate on in order to solve,” he said. “I said, $2.4 billion of projects are underway in Campbell County, which is lopsidedly additional housing, and that’s going to stand us in good stead.”
