Fayette County district judge candidate is withdrawing from race after cancer diagnosis

Shannon Brooks, a Lexington attorney and candidate for Fayette County district judge, has announced she’s withdrawing from the race after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Brooks announced her decision to drop out of the race in a video posted to Facebook Thursday. She said she was diagnosed in early August and learned she would have to go through chemotherapy. She said that while she is withdrawing from the 2022 race, she plans to run for judge again in the future “health permitting, once another opportunity arises.”

“Although there’s never a good time to have cancer, the timing of this is particularly detrimental and leaves me with no other choice, I feel, than to withdraw at this time,” Brooks said in a video posted to her campaign Facebook page.

Brooks was running for district judge in Division 1 of the 22nd Judicial Circuit. She was running against District Judge Denotra Gunther, the incumbent who was appointed to the position by Gov. Andy Beshear in December. Gunther will now be running unopposed.

Brooks is a Lexington native and has worked as an attorney in the Department of Public Advocacy since 2008. She said Thursday she’ll continue to work with the public defender’s office. She’s also a board member for the Fayette County Bar Association.

“If I’m gonna be a judge, and when I become a judge, I want to be a great judge and I want to be able to take the bench with a clear mind and an ability to be present on the law, on the facts of the cases that come before me, and most importantly on the people that I’ll be seeing every day,” Brooks said in the video.

“Undergoing chemotherapy, and what it does to your body, I just don’t that that’s gonna be possible for me.”

Brooks thanked supporters and said she wishes Gunther the best in her term.

“I know we both want good things to happen from the bench for the citizens of Fayette County,” she said.