With ads and attacks: Kelly Craft 'all in' to win GOP nod for Kentucky governor

Kelly Craft had just filed for her first run for political office, jumping into a crowded Republican field full of prominent state officials.

How did she plan on pulling through?

“It's like a Kentucky basketball game,” she told reporters crammed into a lobby near the Secretary of State’s Office in the Capitol shortly after filing in early January. “You walk in the arena — the score is zero to zero.

“And it's whoever is going to be, you know, working the hardest and reaching the most Kentuckians.”

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Months later, it is hard to argue Craft – often praised by supporters for her work ethic – has been outhustled.

Her campaign – heavily bolstered by more than $7 million in loans from her family fortune – has dropped millions of dollars on TV ads, while Craft embarked on an aggressive cross-state tour to meet with voters.

It’s been, as Kentucky political writer Al Cross described it, a “fabulously funded, falsehood-flaunting” campaign. And recent independent polling signals her game plan is paying off.

With front-runner Daniel Cameron’s lead narrowing as the clock runs out, is Craft within striking distance of becoming the Republican nominee to be Kentucky’s next governor?

First-time candidate, but not new to politics

Craft wasn't looking for a job, she told a crowd at a recent stop at a Jeffersontown diner. She watched prominent Republicans announce their gubernatorial runs.

"I did not see anyone who has the experience that I have," she said.

So, one morning in early September, Craft launched her campaign — her first bid for political office.

She’s not a career politician – a fact of which she’s proud – but she’s hardly a political outsider. She and her husband, billionaire coal magnate Joe Craft, have been prominent Republican donors for years.

In the early 2000s, she founded a strategic management and business consulting firm in Lexington. She also co-chaired the Republican National Finance Committee and helped with former President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004.

Who is Kelly Craft? What to know about the candidate for Kentucky governor

A few years later, Bush appointed Craft as an alternate delegate to the United Nations.

The Crafts backed former President Donald Trump in 2016, serving on his inaugural committee after his win. The following year, Trump tapped Kelly Craft to be the country’s first female ambassador to Canada.

In her first ambassador stint, Craft helped revamp the decades-old North American Free Trade Agreement – something she’s touted on the campaign trail as a move that kept jobs in Kentucky.

And in 2019, Trump appointed her to be U.N. ambassador – a role she served in until Trump left office in January 2021.

More: How Trump's pick for UN ambassador has deep ties to Kentucky Republican politics

Hit the ground running

A few weeks after Craft finished 2022 with the most money raised in the race, a January Mason-Dixon poll placed her in second with 13% of the likely Republican vote — 26 points behind Cameron.

The same poll gave her the weakest match-up against Gov. Andy Beshear out of the top Republican options, putting the Democrat at 57% of the vote and Craft at 32%.

On top of that, the poll found 53% of people simply didn’t recognize Craft’s name.

Then came four months of perhaps the most aggressive and expensive primary races in recent Kentucky history.

By the end of April, nearly $8.5 million had been spent on TV ads in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race. Much of that came from either Craft’s campaign or the Commonwealth PAC, a group supportive of Craft but technically unaffiliated with her campaign.

Coal and criminal justice: A look behind the Kelly Craft ad war against Daniel Cameron

She embarked on the “Kitchen Table Tour,” criss-crossing the state to talk to voters. She had been to 100 spots by the start of May, with more scheduled. And that doesn’t include various debates, forums and county GOP dinners and picnics.

The two-pronged campaign style paints a juxtaposition of Craft: TV ads with bombastic, at times misleading, talking points versus a more nuanced, soft but strong in-person version where she is visibly excited to talk to people at an event.

It's a furious pace she and running mate Sen. Max Wise joked about at a recent stop in Campbellsville. Wise told the crowd packed into a food mart in the south central Kentucky city, which he represents, that he has "full faith" that Craft would be "the hardest-working governor."

Other prominent political backers, including state House Majority Whip Jason Nemes and U.S. Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Chairman, vouched for her work ethic.

“I’m all in for her,” Comer told The Associated Press following her announcement. “She has a work ethic that’s second to none.”

The empty chair

While aggressive, Craft’s campaign has been marred with missteps and gaffes, plus a track record of doubling down when fact-checked.

And it started almost immediately.

In her first ad, Craft focused on the fentanyl crisis and the destruction it has done to Kentucky families.

“As a mother, this is personal to me, because I’ve experienced that empty chair at my table,” Craft said to the camera.

A somber, serious ad, it painted Craft as someone who could relate to a pain shared by scores of Kentuckians. It ultimately made fentanyl, at the time not a major piece of anyone else's campaign, a key topic of the campaign cycle.

But it quickly became a target, and journalists’ scrutiny forced her to reveal she hadn’t lost a loved one to an overdose as the ad appeared to imply.

Gerth: Who is missing from Kelly Craft’s table? Someone who can explain her misleading ad

Craft revealed her daughter had survived her struggle with addiction. The campaign criticized those who discounted Craft’s experience since she hadn’t lost someone. But the ad prompted protests from those who had lost loved ones.

With more nuance, the story and talking point remained a key piece of the campaign while the topic of addressing drugs remained a top platform piece.

“And I'm sure you've all seen my empty chair ad,” she recently told a small gathering of people at a Jeffersontown diner.

“My chair in my family at my kitchen table was empty when my child was sitting in it because she was so high she didn't know where she was,” she said. “And then it was empty when she ran away from home. And it was empty again when I had her arrested and put in juvenile detention.”

In another instance, Craft shot an ad at the US-Mexican border. But the ad’s wording was seen by some as clunky, with her promises of “coming for” drug dealers and protecting Kentucky’s borders immediately becoming comedic fodder.

Despite the gaffes, fighting drugs remains a priority for Craft. She wants drug dealers who provide drugs that lead someone to overdose to be subject to the death penalty. (Kentucky’s death penalty has been paused for years due to legal proceedings.)

“I don’t want another mother feeling that pain, another grandmother feeling that pain,” she told the Jeffersontown crowd. “We have to make certain that we tackle this crisis, this drug crisis in the state of Kentucky because it is eating at the very fabric of our state.”

War on 'wokeness'

In early February, Craft vowed to “dismantle” the Kentucky Department of Education.

When asked at the time, the campaign said she planned on “dismantling” the Kentucky Board of Education, too.

When journalists and state education leaders questioned the legality of that, Craft doubled down. And deeper into the campaign, Craft added that she expects to fire Education Commissioner Jason Glass on Inauguration Day if he doesn’t resign beforehand.

Kentucky’s governor appoints the Kentucky Board of Education, which oversees the public K-12 school system and hires the education commissioner. The governor does not have the authority to personally dismantle KDE or KBE, nor do they have the authority to fire the commissioner.

More: Is Kelly Craft copying another Republican's playbook in the Kentucky governor's race?

Battling “wokeness” in Kentucky schools — the crux of the reason she wants to reorganize KDE and get a new education commissioner — is a core piece of her platform. In recent weeks, she’s started bringing copies of books to campaign events that have LGBTQ+ themes that she has referred to as “such trash” that doesn’t belong in schools.

She’s supportive of Senate Bill 150, a sweeping new law sponsored by Wise that is considered to be the most extreme piece of anti-trans legislation in the country.

Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer who tied for fifth with a trans swimmer in 2022 and now advocates against trans women in sports, campaigned with Craft briefly in April.

Background: Kentucky legislature overrides veto of anti-trans bill despite LGBTQ+ youths' pleas

Meanwhile, the nuances of Craft’s education policies rarely make the cut in TV ads or in forums but appear at casual campaign events.

At a recent stop in Jeffersontown, Craft supported ensuring students had access to career and technical education options as well as providing schools with the resources they need to get students to their goals.

“So when you're a senior in high school, it's not your last resort,” she said. “It's your choice” – and one that will be celebrated just as much as someone who lands “a University of Kentucky basketball scholarship.”

She shared success stories of students at the Craft Academy, a dual-credit residential high school based at Morehead State University meant for academically gifted kids that she started alongside her husband.

“So we have such success stories because we believe in kids, we believe in making certain that they're educated to reach their full potential,” Craft said.

Craft’s plan to make the marquee items of her education platform – dismantling KDE and firing Glass – has become more refined but is still unclear. After the Jeffersontown event, Craft explained to reporters her plan for doing both.

“So, we have to start, obviously, with the Kentucky Board of Education and with the Kentucky Department of Education and make certain that what they're concerned with a commissioner is who's going to be the best for our children — ​​to have a quality education, to be able to allow our teachers who have a passion to teach.

“And if that means making certain that (Glass) is removed, I will do so, because what's more important than our kids?” Craft said.

When a reporter followed up, Craft said, “Well, when you're talking about ‘dismantling,’ you mean taking it apart, putting it back together.”

It would be part of an executive order to “reorganize” that would be sent to the legislature to ratify, she continued.

“Make sure you report that correctly," she added.

(A spokesperson for KDE said state law would allow a governor to send lawmakers a suggested plan for overhauling the department, and the legislature would then need to act on it. But that plan would not be considered an executive order, and there isn't a way for a governor to unilaterally reorganize KDE, KBE or change the commissioner.)

Craft also said at the Jeffersontown stop, "There are really good people in the Kentucky Department of Education. They've been silenced. ... So what I'm going to do is make certain that, however we have to do it, that the Kentucky Department of Education puts our teachers, our children and our parents first."

All in, all out

The campaign style appears to be working. By the time a second round of independent polling came out in mid-April, Craft had significantly narrowed the gap between first and second place to just 6 points.

"I think instead of a freefall,” Wise said the day after the poll, referring to Cameron saying their campaign was in freefall. “I think it looks like our trajectory is going up. I like where we're at right now.... (it) shows that we've gotten a lot of momentum.”

When Craft was asked about the poll, she said, "I don't read polls. I'm out meeting people."

Since the April poll dropped, the Craft campaign and its allies have fired off more ads – but they also started to take some punches, too.

An attack ad from a PAC supportive of Cameron dinged Craft for her “misleading” empty chair ad and for not receiving the endorsement of Trump, her former boss. (Trump endorsed Cameron a few months before Craft jumped into the mix.)

Cameron, Craft and lots of jabs: Takeaways from KET's heated GOP governor's debate

Another candidate, Eric Deters, filed a legal challenge arguing Craft does not meet the residency requirements to run for governor, saying during a recent debate he hopes she is disqualified because of it. Craft dismissed his argument, saying she had been vetted by the FBI, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Senate twice and her confirmation papers say she lives in Kentucky.

She's put a lot of money behind that. Craft loaned herself $7 million in the first quarter of 2023. (Her husband had also given $1.5 million to the pro-Craft PAC, raising eyebrows and sparking a review by state election finance officials.)

When asked about the eye-popping self-financing last month, Craft said: “I’m all in and I’m going to go all out.”

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Reach Olivia Krauth at okrauth@courierjournal.com and on Twitter at @oliviakrauth.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kelly Craft 'all in' to win GOP nod in 2023 Kentucky governor's race