JD Vance is coming to Lexington for a Trump fundraiser hosted by Craft, Barr & Rogers
GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance is holding a fundraiser for former President Donald Trump, his running mate, in Lexington next week.
According to multiple copies of the updated invitation obtained by the Herald-Leader, Vance, a freshman senator from Ohio, is headlining a Monday fundraiser for Trump’s campaign to retake the White House this November.
The money raised will go directly toward the campaign, the Republican National Committee, the campaign’s recount account, a political action committee funding Trump’s legal battles and to various state Republican parties.
The fundraiser will be hosted by GOP megadonors and Lexington residents Kelly and Joe Craft.
Kelly Craft ran for governor in 2023 and was formerly a Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Canada and later to the United Nations during Trump’s presidency. Joe Craft, a billionaire coal magnate, is one of the state’s most prominent philanthropists.
The Crafts are leading a nationwide effort by the Republican National Committee to raise money for Trump.
Tickets to attend start at $2,500 per person.
The “host committee” level requires a couple to give or raise $100,000; a photo opportunity is $15,000.
This is not the first Trump campaign fundraiser hosted in Lexington. In May, the president himself attended a fundraiser in the Central Kentucky city. The Crafts also hosted that fundraiser.
A similar fundraiser to be held on the same day featuring Vance had been planned for Pikeville, in Eastern Kentucky. Copies of that invitation circulated on social media earlier this week. The new invitation was sent out to notify attendees of a change of location to Lexington.
A spokesperson for Craft has not commented on why the change was made.
While the Crafts are the primary hosts of the fundraiser, several other notable Kentucky Republicans are listed as co-hosts.
That includes Sixth Congressional District Congressman Andy Barr and his wife, Davis; Republican National Committee Treasurer K.C. Crosbie and her husband Scott; banker Terry Forcht and his wife Marion; Kathryn and Terry Green of Jackpot Farm; top Frankfort lobbyist John McCarthy and his wife Cindy; and Fifth Congressional District Congressman Hal Rogers.
Like the initial Trump fundraiser, the money raised from donations made there go to several different accounts. According to copies of the invitation, the first $3,300 goes to the Trump for President general election account; the next $3,300 goes to the Trump for President recount account; the following $5,000 to Save America, a group that’s spent tens of millions footing Trump’s various legal and investigation-related bills; the next $289,100 to the Republican National Committee; and the remainder to various state Republican parties.
Vance has ties to Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky in particular. Though born and raised in Ohio, he spent much time in his ancestral home of Breathitt County, where he owns land and plans to be buried.
He wrote a bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” that makes frequent mention of Kentucky, Appalachia and Trump-supporting rural voters.
The Ohio Senator has been the focus of negative comments by Gov. Andy Beshear, who has criticized Vance’s positions on abortion, his early campaign comments and his ties to Kentucky.
During the brief period when Beshear was being vetted to run for vice president alongside Democratic nominee Kamala Harris — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was the eventual pick — the 46-year-old governor chided Vance, saying “he ain’t from here,” and making fun of his comments on soft drinks.
Later, a criticism he had of Vance’s comments on pregnancies resulting from rape, he once called them “inconvenient,” drew intense criticism from conservatives.
“’Inconvenience’ is traffic. I mean, it’s — make him go through this,” Beshear told MSNBC host Mika Brezinski. “It is someone being violated, someone being harmed, and then telling them that they don’t have options after that. That fails any test of decency, of humanity.
“But here’s the thing — it also shows they don’t have any empathy at all. And a president and a vice president has to have empathy.”
A widely-circulated clip of Beshear’s answer on television cut off after the words “make him go through this,” and conservatives from all over the country called on Beshear to apologize. Many argued that Beshear’s comments amounted to him advocating for someone in Vance’s family to be raped, a claim which Beshear vehemently pushed back on.
““What the hell is this?” Vance asked in a post to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “Why is (Beshear) wishing that a member of my family would get raped?!? What a disgusting person.”
