Issue #137: Halloween 2023 Part 2: The Pike County Coroner Election
The shrinking Democratic fortunes in Appalachia
Yesterday, as part of my Halloween coverage, I delved into the 2022 Coroner Elections in Kentucky! During that midterm, all county offices were up, from commissioner down to clerk of court. In the post of coroner, Democrats held a majority of seats. However, after losing 26 posts (!) - the GOP now leads in the office.
If you are somehow new to this newsletter and going “wait Kentucky elects coroners???” Yes, and so do many other states.
For more on the Kentucky races, which also sees me delve into other states, go to this link.
This issue is Part 2 of the Kentucky coroner saga. For this piece, I am focused only on one county’s coroner race. Based out in the eastern coal fields of Kentucky, Pike County was one of just two counties were the incumbent Democratic coroner retired but the party managed to hold the seat in a contested race.
Most Democratic holds were unopposed contests, and only a handful of democratic coroner candidates who faced a Republican actually emerged victorious. FOURTEEN Democratic incumbents ran for re-election as Republicans.
Why Pike County?
So to answer this question, why am I dedicated an entire issue to one county coroner contest? Well, this article is a year in the making. I was destined to write about it after I came across the yard sign for Kevin Hall, the Pike coroner Democratic candidate.
I was driving through the county as I made my way north to Akron, OH - on my way to see my mother who was about to be placed into hospice care. Years of highlighting coroner elections now collided with some serious and unwelcome personal news. As I was driving through the area, I spotted the signs and had to turn back.
I wrote much more about that drive and my mother in the issue above.
The Politics of Pike
Politics in Kentucky is nothing new for me. I have focused on Kentucky, specifically politics in the coal fields, for several years now. A good piece to focus on that would be my look at the 2019 Special Election for a State Senate seat in Pike County
The coal fields of Kentucky, which sit in its east and west, are a traditional ancestral democratic but socially conservative region. These areas still produce a good amount of coal, but that is declining. Pike County actually led the state in coal production beginning in 1996. However, it lost that spot in 2012, and now sits at #4 in coal production.
Coal production declined in Pike County for many reasons; the running out of the easiest-to-get coal, the expanding global market, and environmentalism. It cannot be stressed that the economic factors, namely easy of access and other supplies in the world, are the biggest reasons for the decline in Kentucky coal. The decline in coal production was heavily driven by the decline in eastern Kentucky, with the west still holding fairly steady.
This decline has led to drops in jobs and income. Pike has slowly risen in poverty level, currently around 25%. The entire East Kentucky region has seen growing poverty, drug addiction, environmental hazards effecting health, and a decline in the life expectancy.
Longtime a democratic bastion, bolstered by the coal unions, the county, like much of Appalachia, took a hard-right turn in the recent elections. Obama was the first Democrat since 1972 to lose the county, but now federal Democrats rarely crack 25%.
However, while deep red for federal offices, Pike County, along with much of the region, remained Democratic down-ballot. Through the 2018 midterm, Democrats retained control of the Pike County local offices. However, the area continued to trend more Republican, and in the 2019 senate special, Pike County voted, narrowly, Republican.
In 2022, with all county offices up, Republicans made a play for several posts. How did this campaign shake out?
The 2022 Elections
First, lets set up the top of the ticket dynamic for Pike. That same day the county was voting in local elections, the county was giving Senator Rand Paul 74% of the vote. In addition, the pro-life side was winning in Pike on the Ballot Issue 2- which I covered here.
As the precinct map shows, the entire county is Republican and conservative. Only one precinct did not back Rand Paul (a tie) and that same one did vote for the pro-choice position. Where was this?
Pikeville, the county seat. A close-up of it can be seen below. A majority of its vote comes directly from the zoomed-in portion in the city proper. Precincts 104 and 101 also cover the Pikeville city.
Pikeville is the least “Appalachian” of the voting blocks in Pike. Wedged around a mountain slope, the city is home to the University of Pikeville, a major hospital, and has a thriving commercial market. It is notable that while Pike County lost population, a common occurrence in the coal regions, Pikeville saw its population grow.
I visited Pikeville on my road trip last year
So we have arguable one moderate-conservative voting base, with the rest of the county being steadily conservative. While the statewide results within Pike were not much of a shock, the question was how would the local races go. Republicans put up challengers to the 3 incumbent Democratic County commissioners. The body has been controlled by democrats for decades. So, how did those races go?
ALL THREE commission seats went to the Republicans. The margins were actually near identical, but with different voter coalitions. Here is where you can really see the effect of rural communities and having neighbors really swinging votes. You can see that each democratic incumbent had a regional base, but ultimately fell short countywide.
These results mean all 3 Kentucky commissioners will be Republican, a first in the modern era.
Also on the ballot, Republicans challenged the incumbent County Attorney, County Clerk, and Sheriff. How did those races go?
The Democratic Clerk and Attorney lost! Attorney Kevin Keene, if you noticed, was the other campaign sign in my photo. Like the commission races, these maps show little correlation. On the Sheriff side, however, Rodney Scott easily held the position for the democrats. IT should also be noted that Darrell Pugh, the winning Clerk candidate, was the DEMOCRATIC nominee in the State Senate 2019 special.
There were three incumbent Democrats who faced no opposition. However, we have a way to measure support. Kentucky shows the names of unopposed candidates on the ballot. So I compared the total votes cast for these Democrats and compared it with the totals left blank.
Across the three races, on average 40% of voters left these races blank. It is not hard to imagine some, or all of them may have lost had they faced opposition.
That now brings us to the coroner post. Longtime coroner Russell Roberts was retiring, and it absolutely seemed like Republicans could flip this post. The Democratic nominee was Kevin Hall, who served as a deputy coroner in the office. His opponent was Brenda Johnson, a licensed mortician. In the end, Hall won with a solid 60% of the vote.
One factor I do think at play here was Hall, and his funeral home - Hall & Jones, were heavily involved in community support during the July floods, which killed 44 people in east Kentucky. Pike saw no deaths, but the unprecedented mountain floods did tremendous damage. Relief efforts for lodging and food, especially for an area so poor, was critical. Social media is littered with reports of the Hall efforts to aid the community. In a rural area where word travels around, the efforts likely helped boost Hall’s candidacy.
It shows the power of retail politics that can remain in rural communities, even among national headwinds.
Lets just hope he doesn’t run for re-election as a Republican next time. THAT would be a true spooky story.