‘Rising star’ or ‘dangerous’? Meet the chief critic of Kentucky’s COVID-19 response.
On the first Saturday in May this year, about 1,000 people gathered at the Kentucky Capitol to protest Gov. Andy Beshear’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic with his orders to close businesses and public activities.
Many in the crowd did not wear masks, ignoring a strong recommendation by the Democratic governor to curb the spread of the virus. Most did not follow Beshear’s call to stay at least 6 feet apart. Some waved Confederate flags. One sign called the governor “Adolph Beshear.”
One of the speakers at the gathering was Republican state Rep. Savannah Maddox, a freshman lawmaker who is not shy about speaking her mind, which often makes her critics cringe.
After denouncing Beshear’s COVID-19 policies, she loudly proclaimed, “Nobody is ever going to force me to get a vaccine.” Several in the crowd responded to her comment with “yeahs.”
Only 32 and with less than two years of experience as a Kentucky lawmaker, Savannah Maddox has become one of the leading voices of opposition to Beshear.
Admired by the far right, Maddox has become a target of scorn by many who oppose her political views. A private group called “Kentuckians Against Savannah Maddox” has emerged on Facebook.
Group member Chuck Eddy, a Republican who is running against U.S. Rep. Andy Barr of Lexington in this year’s primary election for that seat, said Maddox bothers him.
“What Savannah Maddox is saying and doing is pure politics,” he said. “I think Beshear is handling this conservatively. I believe he’s trying to save lives.”
Her critics might bristle even more when they hear that Maddox says she is “humbled by many” who have encouraged her to run for governor in 2023 against Beshear.
“Yes, some of us have told her she should run for governor,” said Tony Doane, a retired GE employee and a member of the Grant County Tea Party.
“I told her I see her as Kentucky’s next woman governor. She is extremely conservative and I’m tired of the baby-murdering governor we have now who goes along with abortion.”
Beshear has said he supports Roe v. Wade, the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gives a woman the legal right to an abortion.
Maddox’ political profile has increased with her criticism of Beshear’s handling of COVID-19 in Kentucky.
At the protest rally against him at the Capitol earlier this month, she drew much publicity with her claim that Beshear has made Kentuckians prisoners in their own homes with his stay-at-home policies.
The protest against Beshear, though, was not been her first foray into politically conservative causes.
She jumped on them as soon as she joined the state House in January 2019 from the 61st District, which includes all of Grant County and parts of Boone, Kenton and Scott counties in Northern Kentucky.
Maddox, a fervent supporter of gun rights and an NRA member, helped lead the charge in the House last year for a controversial measure to allow Kentuckians to carry concealed guns without any training or state-issued permit.
Hundreds of people cheered her at a gun-rights rally earlier this year at the state Capitol in Frankfort that featured like-minded Republican U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Lewis County.
It’s fortunate for Kentuckians now in this time of coronavirus that there is a permitless-carry law in the state and people don’t have to worry about getting a permit, she said in a recent interview.
Maddox angered many in the LGBTQ community earlier this year with a bill to make it a felony for doctors to prescribe medications or perform surgeries for anyone younger than 18 to alter their gender.
In last year’s and this year’s law-making sessions, she favored the strongest restrictions against abortion.
And then came COVID-19 late in this year’s session and her protests against Beshear for not opening up Kentucky sooner as death tolls from the virus rose.
“I really do like her no-nonsense approach,” said Doane. “You know where she stands. She will not go along to get along. People either love her or hate her. Me? I love her.”
Jennifer Williams, chairwoman of the Grant County Democratic Party, feels differently.
“I would like to have a state representative from this area who advocates for the people and partners with our governor who is doing his best to save lives and not pushing far-right issues,” said Williams. “People in her district have died of COVID-19. I don’t know her personally, but I wonder who she is”
‘The punitive quarantine’
Kentucky recorded its first case of COVID-19 in March out of Harrison County.
“I think the governor did OK early on, responding to the problem,” she said. “I cannot question his personal motivation in this. I can only assume he wants to save lives. I just have a different opinion on how he has handled this.”
She has been critical of Beshear’s travel ban and his decision to restrict gatherings, including church services, steps he said were necessary to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
“My biggest issue with him has been the punitive quarantine,” she said. “I think he has dangerously overstepped his boundaries.”
At the Capitol protest against Beshear, Maddox said the governor was keeping Kentuckians prisoners in their own homes.
Beshear called the protesters “reckless” and repeatedly has said he is putting politics aside and concentrating on fighting COVID-19. He has declined to talk about individual protesters.
A photo emerged from the protest showing Maddox with a woman dressed in military gear, carrying a gun and flashing with her hand a white supremacy symbol.
Former House Speaker Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, criticized the photo and said the state Republican Party should not give Maddox any campaign funds until she strongly condemned it.
“I am not a white supremacist and strongly denounce against any emblems or symbols of white supremacy,” said Maddox.
On the day of the protest, the Lexington Herald-Leader asked her about Confederate flags some protesters had carried. She said Americans have freedom of speech.
Her comment about never being forced to take a vaccine for COVID-19 drew a sharp response from Ivonne Rovira, a teacher and research director for Save Our Schools Kentucky, a non-profit that advocates for public schools.
In a column last week, Rovira called the statement “vaccine wing-nuttery.”
Rovira asked if Maddox is purposefully “spouting nonsense” in order “to appeal to the most deranged elements of (President) Trump’s base.”
“Or does she think that it makes her look like a libertarian badass, saying No to Big Gubmint even when it’s out to save her life?” Rovira wrote.
In a telephone interview, Rovira said she does not personally know Maddox. “I do know that what she says is dangerous.”
Asked recently if she still would not take a vaccine for COVID-19, Maddox said, “I don’t believe I would at this time. If we learn there is one and it is safe, I would make an educated decision at that time.”
Asked if her children get vaccinations, she said, “I don’t want to expose my children’s medical history to this state. However, that is a decision parents should make in conjunction with their physician.”
Who is Savannah Maddox?
A sixth-generation Grant countian, the controversial freshman state representative was born Nov. 2, 1987, to Scott and Susan Switzer of Dry Ridge. She describes them as “working-class folks.”
Her father worked for Cincinnati Bell and her mother was a registered nurse. She has an older brother, Scott Switzer, who also lives in Grant County.
Her parents, she said, were not politicians but they held conservative political views that influenced her. She added that her Christian faith means she “cannot be on the sidelines and be silent.”
The lawmaker attended Williamstown Independent schools and was a good student in a graduating class of about 38 students. At Northern Kentucky University, she received a bachelor’s degree in history and political science.
After graduation, she interned in the 4th Congressional District of former Congressman Geoff Davis before taking a job with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture in the cooperative extension service.
In 2008, she married Eldon Maddox, who is a program manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. They both are from Grant County and met at NKU in a macroeconomics class. They have two children, Levi, 10, and Laura, 8.
The Maddox family lives on a farm and leases pasture land with a beef cattle operation and gardening. Important to them is the Family Bible Church in Williamstown, a small, evangelical, conservative, Christian church.
In 2016, Maddox was Grant County chair for the successful re-election of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. Two years later, she ran for state representative.
“I knew that seat was going to be open and I’ve always had an interest in politics,” she said. “I decided to go for it.”
Republican Brian Linder of Dry Ridge had held the seat since 2013, succeeding Democrat Royce Adams. Republicans started growing in numbers in the district with President Obama’s administration and the emergence of the Tea Party in Northern Kentucky. Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district 19,698 to 14,537.
In the 2018 Republican primary election, Maddox turned back Dr. Michael Fletcher of Independence. In the 2018 general election, Maddox faced four-time Grant County Judge-Executive Darrell Link. She got 68 percent of the vote to his 32 percent, campaigning heavily against abortion and for gun rights.
Savannah Maddox the legislator
Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, a Georgetown Republican who has been a political mentor to Maddox, said the fact that Maddox does not have an opponent in this year’s election “should tell you what the people in her district think about her.”
In her first year in the House, “Democrats just gave her unrelenting abuse over her efforts to provide carrying a concealed weapon without a permit,” said Thayer. “But she stood there, took care of it and won.
“She definitely is a rising star in the conservative movement. She is not afraid to take the tough vote and her political future looks good.”
There is no mystery on where Maddox stands as a legislator on abortion bills, always voting for tighter restrictions against it.
She does differentiate if a mother’s life is in danger. “If the pregnancy progresses to a point where the mother’s life is in danger, I don’t think that would constitute an abortion,” Maddox said. “It would be more of a medical termination.”
Maddox was a hit at the gun rally this year at the Capitol, where some men carried semi-automatic rifles into the building.
“Our gun rights are being eroded,” Maddox said recently. “I know the rifles are controversial but is it really government’s role to say no to them. These rights are God-given.”
Asked where the Bible says that, Maddox said, “Our Founding Fathers relied on God and I’m referring to the rights they spelled out for us — liberty, freedom, justice.”
Late in this year’s legislative session, Maddox filed a bill to restrict Beshear’s power to issue executive orders during the coronavirus pandemic and to allow businesses hurt by the shutdown to sue for relief.
It didn’t go anywhere.
Maddox said she will be back next year with a bill to limit the governor’s “overly broad powers” during a crisis and initiate a special legislative session if an executive order for an emergency exceeds two weeks.
“I feel like legislators have been left out on what the state is doing in this crisis,” she said.
Maddox’ political future
Others hope Maddox doesn’t get another term in Frankfort. The anti-Maddox group on Facebook is trying to find a write-in candidate to oppose her in this year’s House election for the 61st District, said member Chuck Eddy.
“There’s no place for anyone to dismiss these virus deaths,” Eddy said. “This is real. People are dying. I, too, follow Christ but I know people have died from catching the virus at church.”
Bill Adkins, a Grant County lawyer who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 2012 against U.S. Rep. Massie, said he would have run against Maddox “if I had known she was going to say the things about the virus that she has.”
He did not know who might be a write-in candidate to oppose her.
State Sen. John Schickel, R-Union, said Maddox “has a bright future in politics. She’s young but I would never underestimate her.”
She clearly has gubernatorial ambitions.
In 2023, when Kentucky holds its next governor’s race, “we will have a clearer picture of Gov. Beshear’s economic repercussions from COVID-19,” said Maddox.
“I really don’t depart from the Republican Party platform and I am not putting the economy over lives now in this crisis,” she said. “I’m just trying to strike an appropriate balance.”
Will she accept any blame if deaths from COVID-19 spike after clamoring for the reopening of businesses and activities?
“No one should be blamed for something we don’t have control over,” she said.
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 3:02 PM.
