Savannah Maddox drops out of Republican primary for 2023 Kentucky governor’s race
Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, has dropped out of the 2023 race for the Republican nomination for governor.
Maddox made the announcement on Facebook.
“Despite traveling extensively across the Commonwealth, holding a multitude of fundraisers, making thousands of phone calls, sending direct mail, and turning over every rock possible to raise the money, it is clear that we will not have the resources we need to be successful in this campaign. It is for this reason I have decided to withdraw my name from consideration for the Republican nomination for Governor of Kentucky,” Maddox wrote.
Maddox’s withdrawal leaves six candidates for the Republican nomination for governor who have either secured a significant amount of campaign donations or are running professional campaigns. They are Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft, Somerset Mayor Alan Keck, Auditor Mike Harmon and retired Northern Kentucky attorney Eric Deters.
The candidate had received the endorsement of fellow Northern Kentuckian U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie in her bid for governor. As of early Fall, Maddox had raised around $211,000 for her campaign, a respectable but smaller amount than Quarles, Craft or Cameron.
In the statement announcing her withdrawal, Maddox cited fundraising as a primary reason for dropping out. She added while she struggled to raise adequate funds in her run for governor, she would continue to push for conservative priorities.
“I believe, to my core, that the citizens of Kentucky would choose to elect a candidate with the platform we have presented. However, I cannot allow the principles that we have fought for to seemingly be rejected at the ballot box simply because the candidate espousing them does not have the ability to self-fund a multimillion dollar campaign and lacks the financial resources to get the message out to ALL of Kentucky’s primary voters,” Maddox wrote in her statement.
Maddox has grown a sizable following on social media in recent years for her hard-line stances on gun control and against COVID-19 restrictions, among other things. She has also become a leading figure in ‘Liberty’ Republican politics, an informal Tea Party-adjacent faction of the Kentucky Republican party.
In her short-lived campaign for governor, Maddox was one of the most unafraid to sharply criticize her opponents. She criticized Craft for her vast personal wealth and many of the current officeholder candidates for what she characterized as a weak response to the COVID-19 restrictions coming from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration.
How does this change the race?
Maddox’s announcement came as a surprise to many. And in a race with so many candidates vying for whatever edge they can get, a splash as big as this one is sure to change the math for whoever ends up on top of the winner-takes-all GOP primary.
Andrew Cooperrider is now the only openly ‘Liberty’-aligned candidate running for office in 2023, in his GOP bid for treasurer against OJ Oleka. He said that raising money is a natural issue for candidates in his and Maddox’s wing of the party, who often run on a grassroots-based small government platform.
“I believe high-dollar donors don’t donate, they invest. Liberty candidates don’t want government to ‘pay off’ for people, so high dollar donors don’t like giving the Liberty candidates because the investments aren’t going to pay off into their pocket directly. It just takes grassroots fundraising and it takes time to build up that network,” Cooperrider said.
University of Kentucky Political Science Professor D. Stephen Voss called Maddox an “outsider candidate,” and said that it might continue to prove difficult for any such candidate to take the state’s highest office.
“Outsider candidates such as the one Maddox tried to launch usually rely on a sophisticated operation to pulls in a flood of small contributions. Kentucky lacks that sort of fundraising apparatus, and as a poor state, might never be able to build one,” Voss said.
It’s early to guess at which gubernatorial candidate will benefit from Maddox dropping out – after toying with the idea of implementing a runoff election primary system, the state legislature has made it clear that they’re likely to stick to the ‘winner takes all’ single election primary – but Cooperrider said that there are now a significant number of energized folks within the Republican party who are “candidate-less.”
He said that other candidates might be wise to see Maddox’s constituency as an opportunity to make a serious pickup. The two names he mentioned that aren’t even in the race: former governor Matt Bevin and Louisville pizza industry celebrity John “Papa John” Schnatter.
“I think it says that Bevin could be getting in. I’ve also heard that John Schnatter could get in the race, since he’s got the resources and with Savannah not in the race it could open up a lane.”
Several current candidates chimed in on Maddox’s departure. Keck noted that he “appreciated Savannah’s passion and conviction on issues” while Harmon added that he appreciated her voice in the primary. Quarles called her a “grassroots leader” and “someone whose pro-liberty values resonate with many Kentuckians.”
Deters, who has long been a vocal critic of Maddox, said in a video statement that he believes he “vanquished her from this race.”
Northern Kentucky University Political Science Professor Ryan Salzman said that the question of who will benefit from Maddox’s move is dependent on who makes it all the way to the ballot for the May primary.
“This is going to be a very expensive political race. Of course everyone will wonder if there is another reason in addition to the money. Regardless, I think this adds to the intrigue of the race and the political future of Ms. Maddox,” Salzman said.
Maddox has yet to respond to a request for comment on her announcement.
This story will be updated. Reporter Tessa Duvall contributed to this story.
This story was originally published December 20, 2022 at 4:29 PM.
