Lexington parent files complaint with state agency over school board members’ texts

Lexington parent Rebekah Frazier said this week she filed a complaint with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance that alleged Will Nash, a candidate for the first district Fayette school board seat, as well as school district officials, had violated state law.

Nash, who is running in the Nov. 5 general election to keep the seat he was appointed to last year, sent out individual, campaign-related text messages using parent contact information he received from an Open Records request filed with the district. District officials have said they should not have given that information to him.

Board chair Stephanie Spires has also said that as a school board member, Nash should have asked Superintendent Manny Caulk for the information instead of submitting an Open Records Request as a private citizen might. However, Spires said that the information was public.

Nash said he thought he was following proper procedure. But he has also apologized for the controversy and acknowledged that he made mistakes.

Frazier told the Herald-Leader Friday that she filed the complaint Oct. 16 alleging that Nash and the school district violated state law because “I just wanted someone else to review it.”

“I don’t know Mr. Nash personally but I am a parent in the first district and it generally just seemed like an abuse of power,” said Frazier. “I’m pretty sure that no one’s going to let me go get 11,000 names and addresses and send out whatever I want ... “

John Steffen, executive director of the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, said it’s that agency’s policy to neither confirm or deny the receipt of a complaint until certain procedural requirements are met so he could not say whether a complaint had been filed.

Lisa Deffendall, Fayette County Public Schools’ spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Nash told the Herald-Leader Friday that he had not seen the complaint so he could not comment on its contents.

Frazier provided the Herald-Leader with a copy of the complaint which said, in part, that Nash’s use of the contact information to advance his campaign violated state law and that district officials erred by utilizing taxpayer resources to provide Nash with the information.

Although not mentioned in the complaint, Nash was also involved in another controversy during the campaign involving a mailer.

Nash sent out a survey mailer using the district’s preferred mailing rate.

Spires has said in sending what Nash has described as a non-campaign mailer, Nash did not contact a postmaster to see if he could use the district’s mailing rate as the board counsel recommended and instead used the advice of someone from the direct mailing service he had hired. Nash did use the district’s preferred mailing rate on the survey, which he said was not a campaign survey.

Nash and school district officials have said that no public tax dollars were used for the mailer. He said Friday that he had reimbursed the postal service for the discount. Prior to the controversy, Nash distinguished himself by calling for more fiscal transparency in the Fayette school district.

Nash is opposed in the first district by Christy Morris, who recently asked for an investigation of Nash’s campaign actions.

Herald-Leader archives show that Nash had an election controversy in 2005 when he was a University of Kentucky student seeking the Student Government Association presidency.

Nash was elected president, but an appeals board ruled that he had violated a campaign spending rule by using a UK tax exemption number to buy campaign supplies and that his opponent should be president, Herald-Leader archives said. UK spokesman Jay Blanton was quoted as saying at the time that the violations involved about $16 and UK would not investigate or take action against Nash.

After a protracted battle, another panel, the University Appeals Board, reinstated Nash. But Nash’s opponent was ultimately successful in Fayette Circuit Court in maintaining the presidency.

“As I remember the UK issue,” Nash said Friday, “the vendor offered a discount of a few dollars and I naively accepted it. I was 21 and a junior in college at the time.”

“What has been left out of the retelling of this old story is that the University Appeals Board determined that my campaign had not acted egregiously. I would hope an old story from 14 years ago wouldn’t negate the good work I’ve done in education over the last decade,” Nash said.

This story was originally published October 18, 2019 at 6:25 PM.