A feud between Kentucky’s GOP Gov. Matt Bevin and Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, also a Republican, is heating up after Bevin’s administration fired two of Hampton’s aides against her wishes.
Last month, Bevin’s chief of staff Blake Brickman fired Hampton’s deputy chief of staff Adrienne Southworth, which followed the Bevin administration firing Hampton’s chief of staff Steve Knipper this year.
In a statement Tuesday, Hampton said she is “pursuing action” to reinstate Southworth and Knipper and rebuffed GOP calls for her resignation, exclaiming she will “serve the remaining months of my term as I began it: joyful, faithful, humble.”
Brickman acknowledged firing Southworth over the weekend and explained his reasoning to counter “repeated misleading insinuations and blatant lies” about her termination. He accused Southworth of unauthorized efforts to lobby state legislators to support leniency for sex offenders who violate parole and of misusing state property.
Hampton, who called Brickman a “partisan hack” who “clearly overstepped his boundaries,” said Southworth was simply working as her proxy in the Criminal Justice Policy Assessment Council and stressed that this effort “does not imply endorsement or advocation.”
Knipper was fired in January. Bevin’s office said it terminated the employment of Knipper, who ran unsuccessfully for Kansas secretary of state, due to an administration policy forbidding officials from running for elected office.
In a tweet at the end of May, Hampton called on people to “Pray for me as I battle dark forces.” She became the first African American elected to statewide office after the 2015 election.
Bevin is running for reelection this year but decided against having Hampton on his ticket, choosing instead state Sen. Ralph Alvarado. He will face Democrat Andy Beshear, who is the attorney general of Kentucky.
