Kelly Craft’s position on coal will help her husband’s business. It’s not sexist to say so. | Opinion

Earlier this month, we published an opinion column by Kelly Craft, a Republican candidate for governor. According to Herald-Leader policy, each candidate can publish one OpEd per primary season and one for the general election.

Craft’s column was about the need for Kentucky to stick with coal for its energy needs as the cheapest and most reliable fuel. She used the piece to swipe at her two biggest rivals so far, Gov. Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

But we received some letters and social media feedback that expressed concern that her short biography at the end of the piece did not include the information that Craft is married to coal billionaire Joe Craft, who has the kind of deep pockets that campaign managers dream of. Joe Craft, originally from Hazard, is the founder of Alliance Resource Partners, which mines coal in West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Western Kentucky and the Illinois Basin. He is one of the biggest coal producers left in Kentucky and is also well-known for numerous contributions to University of Kentucky Athletics, including the Craft Practice Center, the Wildcat Coal Lodge and the latest football facility.

We didn’t include the information about Joe Craft because it seems like a sexist, outmoded trope to define a woman by her husband. Especially for the only woman in the crowded Republican primary.

But maybe we were wrong. Maybe in this day and age husbands and wives have equal clout and we should have made it clear that Kelly Craft had a very personal stake in extending the life of coal, namely that it will benefit her husband’s business, and by extension, it will benefit her.

She is the only woman in the race, and she’s had a tumultuous start to her campaign, with an expensive ad campaign that has nonetheless garnered plenty of criticism for gaffes about empty chairs and problems at the Mexican border that have nothing to do with the Kentucky governor’s job.

Some of that criticism may be fueled by sexism. Some of it is clearly based on facts. But we’ve had so few women candidates for governor, or statewide office in general, that it’s still good to examine some of these issues.

“This is a tricky issue because in an equitable situation, you should be able to report factually on candidates whether they’re male or female, and if you demonstrably show there are problems then that is not sexist,” said Deborah Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “What we still are concerned about is the issues that get raised about women that have to do with their gender, their electability and likability.”

Kentucky’s only woman governor was Martha Layne Collins, who served from 1983-1987. There have been four female lieutenant governors, including the current Lt. Gov. Jaqueline Coleman.

It’s been a long road. Rebecca Jackson was the Republican county clerk and judge-executive of Jefferson County before she voted to put herself out of a job with merger government. In 2003, she ran for governor but lost in the primary to Ernie Fletcher. When she first started out, people would often comment on her clothes or hair before they started discussing policy.

“We’ve come a long way in the last 20 years,” Jackson told me. “But I still think it’s probably harder for a woman to be taken seriously on the issues no matter what her background is. It’s not so much that anyone thinks that we don’t understand the issues, they think there’s something other than the issues pressing on our minds.”

But when Kelly Craft says she’s going to stand up to China, is it sexism to question how she will do that as Kentucky governor, or simply a logical follow-up question? She’s right that fentanyl is a problem in Kentucky, but it’s being brought in by drug cartels, not immigrants coming from Mexico into the U.S.

“If someone is saying something that’s not accurate, it’s not being sexist,” Walsh said. “You wouldn’t stop to ask if it was wrong to question a man saying the same thing. All candidates have to be held accountable for what they say about policy and issues.”

Walsh pointed out there’s still plenty of overt sexism toward women candidates — hence CNN anchor Don Lemon’s crack about presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s age and when women are in the prime.

Here in Kentucky, I’ve heard some questions (including my own) about the mechanics of Craft’s campaign, but I haven’t heard much about her “likability” or her ability to win the election. In fact, she’s a top candidate because of her experience, her energy traveling to events around the state, and the very deep source of funding provided by Joe Craft.

So when Craft pushes public policy in favor of coal, a policy that will personally enrich her family, I think it’s worth pointing out. That’s something we need to reflect in our opinion pages too.