Mayor appoints former Herald-Leader columnist, managing editor to Lexington council
Mayor Linda Gorton chose a well-known journalist and community member to fill the vacant 3rd District seat on the Lexington-Fayette County Urban County Council Tuesday.
Former Herald-Leader columnist and managing editor Tom Eblen will serve the downtown and campus-area district through December, though he will not appear on this year’s ballot for the seat.
“I never expected to be on this side of the microphone,” Eblen said at a Tuesday morning news conference, “but when Mayor Gorton asked me to take this job, I knew it was a unique opportunity to learn more about my hometown, a place I truly love.”
Mayor Gorton said Eblen’s knowledge of the city makes him a great fit for the role.
“He’s active in many local organizations and is well informed about the issues facing our community,” Gorton said.
“If you know him, you know he can talk to anybody, and he thinks about things,” Gorton continued. “I appreciate that.”
The appointment comes following the resignation of 3rd District Council member Hannah LeGris, who stepped down in January to take a job within the city government.
The district, which is the heart of Lexington’s urban core and includes most of the University of Kentucky’s campus, has been the center of many tense development discussions in recent years.
Several student apartment complexes have been proposed and hotly debated. The council is also set to consider a draft of a new downtown area master plan that will set a vision and policy goals for urban development for the heart of the city.
Eblen, who has long covered the city as a journalist and studied local history, says he hopes to strike a balance in the tension between density and preservation.
“A lot of it is just being sensitive to our current neighborhoods and looking for ways to fit density in where it won’t disrupt other people’s lives,” Eblen said. “One of the main ways we can do that is to look at some of our corridors and some of our underutilized land and not really encroach too much on neighborhoods.”
Eblen’s answer echoes the central development philosophy of Fayette Alliance, a group that advocates for dense urban development and the preservation of agricultural land. Eblen recently served on the organization’s board and resigned Monday to avoid conflicts of interest.
He also serves as a part-time staffer at the Carnegie Center, overseeing the organization’s Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame program and other literary initiatives.
Eblen was the managing editor of the Herald-Leader from 1998 to 2008 and the metro/state columnist from 2008 to 2019.
Two prominent locals are vying to succeed Eblen in this year’s election for the seat. Griffin VanMeter, an entrepreneur behind Bullhorn Marketing and former face of the NoLi Community Development Corporation, will face attorney and former Fayette County Judge-Executive Jon Larson in the November general election.
Since there are only two candidates for the seat, there will be no May primary.
Reporter’s note: This story was updated at 2:27pm Feb. 3 to include details of Eblen’s resignation from the Fayette Alliance board.
This story was originally published February 3, 2026 at 11:02 AM.
CORRECTION: The official swearing in Tom Eblen in the photo on this story is Fayette Circuit Judge Lucy VanMeter. This information was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
