KY’s famed ham goes for $10M at charity auction where McConnell takes stage
Another year, another prized Kentucky ham auctioned for an eight-figure contribution to charity.
Joe and Kelly Craft, prominent Lexington philanthropists, joined Central Bank in making the winning, $10 million bid on the ham at the 61st annual Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast hosted by Kentucky Farm Bureau Thursday.
The $10 million total comes close to the record set last year, when the Crafts — Joe Craft is a billionaire coal magnate and Eastern Kentucky native, while Kelly Craft is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who ran for governor in 2023 — made a solo bid for $10.5 million.
The joint bid marks the fifth consecutive year the Crafts have been involved in the winning offer on the ham. Prior to 2024, the Crafts and Luther Deaton, representing Central Bank as its chair and president, made the winning bids three years in a row: in 2021 at $4.8 million, in 2022 at $5 million, and in 2023 at $10 million.
The Crafts were not at the event, instead bidding through a representative. Jennifer Barber, a Frankfort native who served as a delegate to the United Nations when Craft held her post, made the bids on the family’s behalf.
Barber told media the money would go toward building homes in Eastern Kentucky, the Craft Academy for gifted students at Morehead State University and to help the Boys & Girls Club of Barren County, where Kelly Craft is from.
“The Crafts are very generous, and they spend a lot of their time and resources to help Kentuckians and to help improve, especially, the areas where they grew up,” Barber said.
Barber said Kelly Craft would have liked to be present, but was in Australia speaking about nuclear submarines and AUKUS, a trilateral naval agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Deaton told reporters Central Bank’s cut of the bid goes toward “several charities” in communities served by the bank, as well as some universities.
He said he has built a Christmas routine featuring the ham. First, the bank’s owner cooks some and they have breakfast together that morning.
“My owner cooks a breakfast on Christmas day for me. We have a good Christmas breakfast, and then I take some of it, we fry it and we take it to a McDonald’s where I hang out sometimes with some farmers. We have biscuits and gravy — I mean, biscuits and ham,” Deaton said.
When asked if he’d let up on the ham streak Central Bank and the Crafts have built, Deaton had a simple answer.
“Well, if they want to bid, let them bid. I welcome everybody,” Deaton said.
McConnell headlines
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg kicked off the ceremony welcoming everyone and Commissioner of Agriculture Jonathan Shell got plenty of time at the podium, but the main event for the crowd of hundreds was Sen. Mitch McConnell.
McConnell has just over a year left in office, as the 83-year-old opted to not seek reelection in 2026. All three of the leading GOP candidates to replace him were in attendance, as well.
The legislator was honored with a video highlighting his long career as one of the most important U.S. senators of the modern era, particularly his focus on agriculture. Kentucky Farm Bureau President Eddie Melton gave McConnell plaudits for his work on the committee overseeing agriculture, on which he has served throughout his 40-plus years in the Senate.
Melton called McConnell “a man that has served Kentucky better than any I know of.”
McConnell, in a lengthy speech, opined on big issues of the day like the war between Ukraine and Russia, as well as President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have affected Kentucky farmers.
He lauded the beefed up military presence of Germany and Japan, which has been a focus of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, and expressed hope for an agreement to come out of new discussions between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the two nations have been at war since.
“What are we trying to avoid at this point? We don’t need a headline that says ‘Russia wins and America loses.’ That’s not the headline we need. So, I think the most important thing to come out of all of these Ukraine discussions is Ukraine needs to have a deal that they can live with, that needs to be enforceable, because that sends your message around the world — with the Chinese, for example, who might have aspirations for the Philippines and Taiwan. ‘You really don’t want to do that, because these people are aligned with the United States,’” McConnell said.
The senator also bucked parts of his usual routine at big events, instead reminiscing on his political success, having been elected to his post on seven different occasions and picked as GOP leader long enough to break the record for longest party leader in Senate history.
“(In politics), there’s always a lot of talk about who’s popular and who isn’t. Let me tell you how to measure popularity: It’s winning elections. Thanks to you, I won seven Senate races, nine leader races. I’m undefeated at the end of my long game,” McConnell said.
A factor in that remark: McConnell has been at the center of negative messaging from Nate Morris, a Lexington-based candidate running for the GOP nomination to the Senate against Rep. Andy Barr and former Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
Morris, who has pitched his candidacy as a total departure from McConnell, disagreed with McConnell’s comments after the breakfast.
“We know the longer something stays in Washington, the more corrupt it becomes, the more disconnected it becomes from our people,” Morris said. “The measure of success is results. And what we’ve seen is Mitch McConnell has presided over some really bad stuff in our country and done some really bad stuff against the president.”
When asked if he had any positive things to say about McConnell or if he agreed with any of the plaudits heaped on the senator from stage, Morris didn’t offer much.
“You know, he put his name on a ballot. But you know, eventually, at some point, everyone has an expiration date,” Morris said.
