The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Town votes against a culture war rematch
Davis vs. Ermold doesn’t materialize after primary.
It was supMOREHEAD, KY. — posed to be one of the biggest
political showdowns in Kentucky this fall: Kim Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, running against David Ermold, the gay man she denied a marriage license to three years ago. That moment, caught on camera, set off a red-hot culture war over the summer of 2015 in this quiet corner of Appalachia.
Since Ermold announced he was running for county clerk in December, he raised more than $200,000 from around the country and drew supporters far and wide. This was a campaign, he said in an interview before the primary, for a “happy ending” to the whole, loud episode, for “redemption and how our county will be remembered.”
But when the votes were counted Tuesday night in the Democratic primary, the opportunity to face Davis, the Republican incumbent, in the November general election fell to someone else altogether: Elwood Caudill Jr., chief deputy in the county property valuation office.
“Just like I told you,” said Walter Blevins, the 68-year- old Democratic judge-executive of Rowan County. He was sitting back, between karaoke numbers, at the usual place he sings on Tuesday nights, sip- ping on his standard tequila with a splash of cranberry juice. “It’s a local race. People know each other.”
Caudill is a familiar figure, having run for county clerk in 2014 and come within 23 votes of beating Davis —
then a Democrat — for the party nomination. She went on easily to win the general election, as Democrats nearly always do for local office here. This time, Caudill won with 1,923 votes, in a field of
four. Ermold, with 873 votes, was the runner-up.
Perhaps Caudill’s biggest appeal was he only wants to talk about being county clerk. In a conversation about his ambitions for the office, he highlighted the need for a new fire alarm system so the sprinklers won’t damage any of the deeds in storage.
Everyone in Rowan County is tired of hearing about Rowan County. When the news of Davis’ defiance got out that summer, international media descended, presidential candidates elbowed into the spotlight and demonstrators from all over crammed into the county government build- ing — “Real radical peo- ple,” Blevins said of some of them, “loudspeakers and bullhorns, all fire and brim- stone.” Davis went to jail for five days and came out a hero of ing To the parties religious people not right, long who after. chang- lived through them, those long summer months were exhausting, aggravating and humiliating. Morehead, the county seat, is a quiet college town, with a City Coun- cil that in 2013 unanimously extended anti-discrimination protections to gay, lesbian and transgender peo- ple. But nobody outside the county ever seems to ask about this, or about the Kentucky Folk Art Center, or the lab at Morehead State where they build spacecraft. No, whenever county residents travel, they hear only about the clerk’s office and the mar- riage licenses. People are not particularly fond of talking about it anymore, and cer- tainly not to reporters who come around asking. “Maybe it had to happen somewhere in the U.S., but I don’t think any place would have raised their hand and said, ‘Let it be here,’ ” said Jeff Fannin, a local pastor and the operator of The Good Shepherd’s Printing Services. Politics used to be pretty predictable. The same families showed up in election after election — Davis succeeded her mother, who was dill around or Jones. is clerk as common the for Then county 37 years. came a last as Smith name “the Cauwhole some The call county deal the that events clerk’s went office of on,” 2015. is, as essential: recording running deeds, elections, handling titles for hunting, and issuing fishing licenses and, of course, front line marriages. of the government, It is the the arbiter of what is officially recognized as legiti- mate, and what is not. T hu s Ermold was maddened to hear his competitors, Caudill in particular, complain of inconveniences of the summer of 2015, as he spent most of his life officially marginalized and in many ways left at risk.
“I not only understand but I’ve been dealing with it for the past 44 years,” he said.
Still, it is a county office, one of 120 in Kentucky, and its commission is carrying out routine details of bureaucracy, not setting a big social agenda. Ermold acknowl-
edged that he had to combine his campaign message of redemption and social prog- ress with an assurance that he could efficiently manage car tags and fishing licenses.
“I kind of didn’t focus on that at first because I just took it for granted that I have the experience to do it,” he said.
Davis, who was unopposed on primary day, has a simi- larly two-pronged message. In an interview Tuesday she insisted she never sought the attention that came that summer, she in fact hates conflict. She said she was not sure if she would run again this year but felt called to do so, and that she wants to focus her campaign on her experience running the office.
Still, since the summer of 2015, she has appeared in statewide Republican campaign ads, met the pope, campaigned against samesex marriage in Romania, attended a State of the Union address and recently published a book: “Under God’s Authority: The Kim Davis Story.” In the past few months, Davis has carried in her purse “five smooth stones from the valley of Elah” — the weapons David used to slay Goliath. She saw herself as David and had considered her potential opponent, Ermold, as Goliath. It is unclear how Caudill now fits into the analogy.
Caudill does not think Davis should have done what she did. He was not objecting to her beliefs, he said, but “you are elected to do a job.” She did not do the
job. This prosaic approach is why many of his supporters believe he stands a better chance of beating Davis in a general election than Ermold did. But it is also what left many fired-up local supporters of Ermold in a dour mood Tuesday night, with one taking to Facebook to say he couldn’t wait to leave a town he called “bigoted.” Some of the people at Pasquale’s restaurant, where Democrats had gathered to watch the returns Tuesday night, insisted it was nothing like that. A 2016 law had removed the clerk’s names from marriage license forms, rendering the actual conflict moot. Running for the clerk’s office to make a statement about social change, some suggested — well, that was the whole issue with Kim Davis in the first place. “Now,” said Traci Stevens, 24, who works at the local Cracker Barrel, “it’s just who’s going to do the job better.”