On heels of opioid & education controversies, Kelly Craft tries to move forward

Kelly Craft is hitting all the usual gubernatorial campaign beats: meeting with small groups of Kentuckians across the state to make her pitch as to why she’s the best candidate on jobs, education, the economy and more.

But she’s also buffeting controversy. The candidate recently took flack for an ad – focusing on an ‘empty chair’ due to addiction – that some interpreted as insinuating that she lost a loved one to addiction.

The campaign’s response was baked into her Wednesday stop at Craft House Pizza (no relation) in Lawrenceburg. Craft, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, revealed to attendees on Wednesday afternoon that her daughter, who struggled with addiction but did not die as a result, had been in rehab and once ran away from home.

“I have lived it. I have had a child that has had an addiction, and that empty chair at my table was empty even when she was there. And then it was empty when she was in rehab. Then when she came back, she got back into it then ran away. It was empty in her Sunday school class. It was empty in her high school because I had to withdraw her,” Craft said of her daughter, whom she did not name. “There are empty chairs all over the state, and I have lived it.”

Some in a small group of undecided Republican women from Lawrenceburg commented after the event that they appreciated Craft sharing more details on her daughter.

“The empty chair thing – a lot of people were questioning that – but now that she’s explained that, I can understand her anguish of having a child deal with that,” Lorrie Gritton, a retired state government worker, said.

Clinton County Circuit Court Clerk Jake Staton – a Craft supporter and frequent attendee at her events – chimed in during Craft’s Q&A with the crowd to hammer home her message that the “empty seat” does not exclusively reference those who have died.

“I like what you said, ‘there are people sitting at chairs and tables that aren’t really there.’ An empty chair, I didn’t think that anybody had passed away in that (ad),” Staton said.

Many Kentuckians, including those who have lost loved ones to the historic drug epidemic, took issue with the ad. A group of grieving mothers protested a recent Craft event in Versailles because of a perceived disconnect between the ad’s message and reality.

Given that so many responded that way, does Craft have any regrets about the ad and how it was received?

“No. You know what it’s done? It’s opened up a dialogue between people that might have not shared their pain. They now know ‘it’s okay to talk about it.’ Every family, every individual that I speak to, they have all been touched by drugs in some way… We have a drug crisis in this state, and my empty chair ad highlighted this crisis,” Craft said.

‘Dismantling’ KDE and more

Craft also dropped from her routine (she’s been holding “Kitchen Table” events at establishments across the state) a line that drew significant criticism this week: that she plans to “dismantle the Kentucky Department of Education.”

The phrase, first reported by a liberal PAC that specializes in tracking Republican candidates, garnered criticism from defenders of public schools. Some took it to mean that Craft wanted to do away with the KDE, but she stated again on Wednesday that she wanted to “dismantle and revamp” it.

When asked about what that line means in terms of material change, Craft was short on specifics but said that it boiled down to dismissing leaders of the Kentucky Department of Education and Kentucky Board of Education and replacing them with like-minded individuals

“What I intend to do is to dismantle and revamp, and that means making certain that we take the Kentucky Department of Education and the Kentucky Board of Education and we put people in there whose focus is on teaching our children, teaching them to their full potential; making certain that we empower parents, and that we develop this relationship between parents and teachers,” Craft said.

She pointed to efforts of her and her husband, billionaire coal magnate and philanthropist Joe Craft, to create Craft Academy at Morehead State and sponsor training for high school principals as evidence of her support for public schools.

Craft’s event coincided with her running mate, Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, making a splash in education policy by introducing a bill that, among other things, would prohibit local school districts from requiring teachers to use “pronouns for students that do not conform to that particular student’s biological sex.”