Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, in Bardstown on Tuesday to receive the first Ron Paul Liberty Award from the Republican Party of Nelson County, said she doesn’t know what’s next for her when she leaves office at the end of next month, but she wouldn’t rule out running for something else.
“Everything is on the table,” she said in an interview with The Kentucky Standard.
Then she repeated those words.
Twice.
Richard Hardin, whom she called her “Sherpa” in the 2015 governor’s race, in which she was Gov. Matt Bevin’s running mate, said he thinks Bevin was elected because of her.
“When I first met her, I knew she was the real deal. There’s a lot of us who are praying and hoping that I get to be her campaign chairman again here one day,” he said.
Hampton, a tea party leader from Bowling Green with a background in the military and manufacturing, inspired people in the conservative liberty movement during that race and her four years in office.
She was the first African American elected statewide in Kentucky’s history, but that wasn’t important to her, she said. She didn’t run to be the first anything. She ran to serve her state.
Hampton called her time as lieutenant governor “absolutely worthwhile.”
“You can define the job” of lieutenant governor, she said.
The state constitution doesn’t define it. When lieutenant governors were elected independently years ago, they presided over the state Senate, but now the senators elect one of their own as president. The lieutenant governor’s only role is to act as governor if the governor dies in office or is incapacitated.
“Most lieutenant governors have had a cause of some sort that they’ve focused on, and I had several, but the overarching theme was ‘our youth,’ ” Hampton said.
That has included such things as promoting literacy to advocating for middle school girls in STEM challenge, she said.
Tuesday, she visited a group of schoolchildren at Nelson Baptist Church.
School visits have been the most rewarding part of her job, she said.
The Saturday before, at the Veterans Day Parade in Bowling Green, she said, a mom told her that her daughter still talked about some of the lessons Hampton had shared with her class years before.
“This has been an opportunity to serve that I never anticipated,” she said.
However, it had a rocky ending.
‘A strange year’
Bevin, who lost re-election Nov. 5 by just under 5,200 votes, chose not to run with Hampton this year, but with Republican state Sen. Ralph Alvarado of Winchester.
The governor then caused controversy by firing all her staff except for her administrative assistant, Ruth LeMaster, without even consulting her.
Hampton said she had “come to terms” with the governor not wanting her to be his running mate again, but not with his axing her employees, including her chief of staff, Stephen Knipper, and her deputy chief of staff, Adrienne Southworth.
“It’s absolutely inexcusable, and I still don’t understand it, but I’ve given up on trying to figure that out,” she said. “They were both fired without any discussion with me at all. Coming from the private sector … there’s a way you handle that, and this was not handled well at all.”
Southworth unexpectedly showed up at the library for the award presentation and sat with LeMaster, who was traveling with Hampton. Speaking to a gathering of about 20 people, she said they did “nothing wrong.”
Bevin was taken to court over the firing, but a Franklin circuit judge ruled that the governor was within his rights to terminate them.
It “makes no sense,” she said, that the lieutenant governor is the only state executive constitutional officer who can’t hire and fire her own staff.
She said she hand-picked hers and that they were multi-talented. Knipper, who ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 2015, was good at project management and had information technology skills, she said. Southworth was good at reading and understanding legislation and had other attributes as well.
“A strange year, to be sure, but the Lord’s doing something, and he hasn’t shared it with me yet,” she said.
Hampton wouldn’t say whether she voted for Bevin this year.
“I voted for the person I thought was best. I’m not going to say right here. I did not vote Democrat. I can say that,” she remarked.
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Written by Randy Patrick. Cross-posted from the
Kentucky Standard via the Kentucky Press News Service.