Kentucky’s next agriculture commissioner: Let’s put politics aside

Jonathan Shell is tired of politics.

The 35-year-old commissioner of agriculture-elect is also about to hold the highest political office of his young life and long political career.

Shell is ready to dig into that role while eschewing the political game, he told the Herald-Leader while giving a pickup truck tour of his family farm in Garrard County.

The setting is only one facet of Shell that makes him the near-prototypical Kentucky commissioner of agriculture. He has the farming chops – just before he showed off the family cattle herd, he drove past fields of cover crop and a now-obsolete watchtower once used for growing hemp – and the political history.

When Shell says he’s “tired of politics,” he doesn’t exactly mean it in the way that outsiders often pitch themselves for political office. One gets the sense that he’s actually tired of it.

The incoming commissioner of agriculture is more perky when discussing his prized pumpkin patch – his pumpkin placed eighths at the Kentucky State Fair’s “largest pumpkin contest” this year – than re-hashing how Republican ticket-topper Daniel Cameron fell short to Democratic incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear.

“At times, I think I know a lot about politics and then something like this happens, and I just don’t understand it,” Shell said.

Still, it would be hard for Shell to brand himself as an outsider when he’s spent the majority of his adult life deeply involved in politics.

In 2012, he became an exceptionally young 24-year-old state representative and rose through the ranks to become the first Republican House Majority Floor Leader in nearly 100 years. In 2018, he was surprised in a Republican primary defeat by a teacher who campaigned on the much-protested teacher pension reform bill.

Outside of office, but still in politics, Shell has chaired the campaign of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, helped lead a conservative think-tank and more.

Shell’s candidacy straddled the minutiae of agricultural policy and a broad strokes nationalizing strategy.

The slogan, “Stop Biden. Save Kentucky,” was a clear play at roping in the unpopular Democratic president to a much more localized and industry-specific race. It also was a reference to a somewhat arcane but consequential Environmental Protection Agency regulation.

The Biden-centric messaging was the target of some derision, though Shell said it worked.

“I bet you I could have sold those signs for $20 apiece because people wanted to make sure that people knew they felt the same way,” Shell said.

But the secret to Shell’s longevity in politics is not in the slogans. As he’ll tell you, it’s all about the relationships.

What’s been his most important political relationship? Without a doubt, it’s First Congressional District Rep. James Comer, who now occupies a leading role in the slim Republican U.S. House Majority’s efforts to go after Democratic President Joe Biden.

“I tell people today that if he had decided to run for Ag Commissioner again, I’d have stepped away and let him do it. If he runs for governor, I’ll be for him. I just love Jamie Comer, and I’m indebted to him. I’m loyal to him and he’s just – he’s my guy,” Shell said.

The commissioner of agriculture-elect offered more details on his relationship with Comer, plans for the upcoming term and more in an interview with the Herald-Leader.

Answers have been edited for space and clarity.

Herald-Leader: You won by a healthy margin in November’s election where Cameron lost by 5 points. Why do you think that is? Why was there a separation between the top of the ticket and the other candidates?

Shell: I’m not really sure. Being honest, I don’t know what the reason was. I don’t think it was quality of candidate because Daniel was a great candidate. At the end of the day, a Beshear has been on the ballot for over three decades now in the state of Kentucky. Name ID and recognition matters, and his handling of certain situations in the state – the tornadoes and flooding – he was able to be on the news quite a bit.

Beating an incumbent, you’ve got to give people a reason why. The funding just wasn’t there on Daniel’s side in a big way. I think I know a lot about politics and then something like this happens, and I just don’t understand it.

What I’m focused on is not what happened in the election. What I’m focused on now is trying to get together what I need to be doing as ag commissioner. I’m just kind of tired of politics myself. I really don’t care much about it right now. I think that what we need to be focused on, as elected leaders, is the struggles that people are going through – that includes high prices at the gas station and grocery store, input cost at the farm, making sure that we’ve got markets available and that state government is working the way it’s supposed to. To me, a lot of the time, politics gets in the way of it.

H-L: Any big legislative priorities coming up this session?

Shell: I don’t see that there are going to be many changes from what (the current administration) is proposing right now. When I look at a legislative slate coming in this next time and trying to focus on things, I just want to make sure that we’re funded well enough in the department so that we can continue the programs that need to be continued to keep the state’s ag community running, to keep these programs going in the right direction. And then outside of that, we’re gonna look at the priorities that the Quarles administration has been working with with the legislature on.

For me, this first session is going to be more about building the relationships, talking to legislators, seeing where they want to be talking to staff in the department about any priorities that they have coming in. Then as we get through session and we start to put together that vision and that platform, there might be things that we want to look at later in the session.

H-L: AppHarvest: It was touted by government and media and all sorts of people as this cutting edge future for farming. Are there any governmental missteps in the AppHarvest story or places to lay blame, or is this merely a story about a company that didn’t work out?

Shell: I think a lot of times what we do in economic development is we try to pump things up from a government standpoint, whether it’s the Ford battery plant, or Braidy industries, or the hemp industry, or AppHarvest – name ‘X’ economic development project, we try to pump it up during campaigns to make things look great. And then you know, there’s a lot of blame to go around whenever these things don’t come to fruition. It may be as simple as ‘it was a bad business model.’ It may be as complicated as onerous regulations, either federal or state.

I’ve not dug down into it, but what I want to be able to do with economic development that I’m a part of – because I’ve been on the backside of some of these things where it’s hurt me and my family – is be cautious with how we do these things and the optimism that we give people. Yes, we need to be searching out new industries and see what we can do to really increase and promote the new technologies that are coming, but at the same time we need to stay in reality. These markets are not in a bubble, and that we’ve got to really do our due diligence to make sure that whenever we’re telling people this is going to change their life that it’s actually going to do it.

It hurt our family, specifically, whenever we got into the hemp industry. Now there are relics and ruins here on our farm of things that we’ll never utilize. We don’t grow hemp on the farm anymore, and there’s places like that all across the state.

H-L: Can you talk a little bit more about your experience with hemp?

Shell: We were participants in that company. We were growers for them. What happened with us is we just didn’t get paid. The company went bankrupt. There was a lot of optimism coming into (hemp), that it was gonna replace tobacco in Kentucky and it just never panned out to be that way. If you’re gonna grow corn, you know where you’re gonna go sell it, you know what price you’re gonna get for it. In the hemp industry, people got in, prices tanked and companies went bankrupt. There were a lot of farmers and businesses out in the state that got left with an empty bag.

H-L: Relatedly: Marijuana. There’s a bill that sets forth all the regulations and how it can be grown, but what’s your vision for how medical marijuana fits into Kentucky’s agriculture world?

Shell: Right now, there’s not a role for the Department of Agriculture in the bill that they put out, so until that legislation has changed, I don’t know that we do have a role. If the legislature decides they want to put some of the growing regulatory framework underneath the Department of Agriculture, we’ll regulate it and do it to the best of our ability to ensure that there’s a good outcome for growers and businesses and people that are going to participate in that program. But as of right now, I’ve not put much thought into because it’s not there.

H-L: Do you think Kentucky should stop at only legalizing medical marijuana? Do you support recreational marijuana? Or is it possible that recreational is just an inevitability?

Shell: I don’t know about the inevitability part of it. Just from a policy standpoint, I don’t personally think that we should go down the recreational side of it.

H-L: Can you explain your campaign’s ‘Stop Biden, Save Kentucky’ line? I think some people might have seen that and thought, ‘What’s the ‘stopping Biden’ line got to do with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture?’

Shell: Whenever you’re talking about getting 15 seconds, 30 seconds to give a message to 4 million people, you have to boil that down. What I felt across the state of Kentucky was that people do want to stop Biden and save Kentucky. Even Democrats in this state see the ridiculousness of what we have on the federal level with a president who has shaken the air whenever he gets off the podium and the radical policies that are coming out that are just crushing the middle class in this country. What I felt on the campaign when I was talking to people on a daily basis, whether it was factory workers or farmers or teachers and nurses, is that they feel frozen in this economy right now. They feel frozen in the workforce. They feel frozen being able to speak their belief for fear of ridicule.

We’ve gotten to a point in this country where the people have to fear what they’re going to say because it can be taken out of context. That’s what it meant to me, to stop Biden and save Kentucky, and I can tell you that as much as it made some people uncomfortable, it made more people energized. I bet you I could have sold those signs for $20 apiece because people wanted to make sure that people knew they felt the same way.

H-L: What do you think is next for you politically? Do you want to serve both terms? As Commissioner of Agriculture? Would you be open if there’s some kind of vacancy for another office?

Shell: I’ve never tried to plan for my political future. It’s not something that I’ve done. I’m just trying to do the best job that I can whenever opportunities are available. The reason I ran for state representative when I did is I saw a need. That’s the reason I ran for Ag Commissioner. If there’s one person that if people want me to do something more than be a commissioner that they have to convince and that’s my wife. At the end of eight years, I’m going to have a 20-year-old, an 18-year-old, 16-year-old and a 14-year-old. My kids are going to be older at that point in time. What I want to focus on now is being the best Ag Commissioner that I can be for the state, but also being able to find that work-life balance where I can continue to be the best husband and best father that I can.

. I can’t stand politicians that are always looking for their next thing myself, and so I don’t want to be that person either.

H-L: You’ve got strong ties to James Comer as well as Mitch McConnell through the 2020 campaign...

Shell: Yeah, and I’ve been involved on the Rand Paul’s campaigns with Brett Guthrie’s campaigns and Andy Barr’s campaigns. I mean, I’m not a one-person candidate. I’m a “if you’re a team player and you want to work, then I’m on your team.” If I have to go back to being one person’s guy I’m more of a “Jamie Comer” than I am anybody. He’s actually the one that inspired me to run for state representative the first time.

In 2012, all the state representative, had endorsed my opponent. Comer had met me during his campaign and we kind of hit it off and became friends. Whenever I was thinking about running, I called him and he said, “Yeah, you should do it.” I was the kind of person, you know, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh in my truck and I thought that every politician was a joke like “they all should be thrown out.” Jamie Comer was the first time that I realized that you can be a regular, everyday person and run for office and make a difference. That’s still what he is today. I mean, when I’m with him he still is talking to his high school best friends, joking and carrying on.

So I run for state representative and everybody in Frankfort is like “that Shell boy, he’s gonna get beat so bad. He’s never been in politics. He’s too young.” And Comer would go around defending me saying, “y’all, I don’t know about that. Wait and see. I’ve met that boy, he’s pretty good.” I ended up winning, and Jamie and I got really close during that period of time, and I consider him to be one of my best friends. Now we talk weekly, at least, and I don’t make many moves without talking to him first. I tell people today that if he had decided to run for Ag Commissioner again, I’d have stepped away and let him do it. If he runs for governor, I’ll be for him. I just love Jamie Comer, and I’m indebted to him. I’m loyal to him and he’s just – he’s my guy.

H-L: Are you open to working with Gov. Beshear?

Shell: I’ve never had a conversation with him, but Rocky and I have had a great relationship over the years. Whenever I took his position as majority leader when we flipped the House of Representatives, Rocky and I used to have a standing lunch every Thursday in my office. We tried to continue that relationship during his time as minority leader. Rocky and I feel like we’ve got a great working relationship and we’ll continue that. I actually saw him at (a recent conference) and was joking with him about his position and all the clout that comes with it. I said, “We still gonna work together?” He said, “Absolutely. We’ll work together on whatever you need, just call me. You’ve got my cell phone number.”

I come from a background of greenhouses, cattle, pumpkins. When people come to my farm, and they want to buy flowers, I don’t ask them if they’re Democrat or Republican to sell them flowers. Whenever there’s something that needs to be done in the state, I’m not gonna be the person bringing politics into it. What I want to do is just do the work.