An Honest Dollar

As a hardworking American and a fully satisfied employee of the University of Kentucky, I think that when an oligarch buys influence, the oligarch should get influence. Some miscreants, rabble rousers, and outside agitators evidently feel different:

Gov. Andy Beshear left something unsaid in his criticism of University of Kentucky leadership, casting doubt on the creation of a high-paying position and the naming of incoming UK College of Law Dean Gregory Van Tatenhove, a federal judge. He said he worried the “actions are related to certain donors pushing partisan and undue outside influence onto the university,” but stopped short of naming those donors… However, Van Tatenhove’s financial disclosures from 2014 to 2019 indicate one clear candidate. The judge has a documented relationship with the family of Kelly and Joe Craft, a Kentucky philanthropist and coal magnate worth more than $1 billion. Together, they are some of the biggest Republican donors in the country, recently leading a Republican National Committee effort to raise money for President Donald Trump in 2024.

The Crafts appear repeatedly in Van Tatenhove’s financial disclosures as having provided gifts to the judge and his family or reimbursing him multiple times. The disclosures are publicly available via the U.S. courts system. For instance, in 2016, Joe Craft is listed as having reimbursed Van Tatenhove’s travel to Charlotte, Chicago, New York City and Florida. Those trips are listed as “personal travel” in the federally-required disclosure forms. While the Crafts have ties to Van Tatenhove, the gift-giving and reimbursements have slowed in recent years: They haven’t showed up on the judge’s disclosures since

Both alumni, the Crafts are UK Athletics’ largest donors and rank among the top donors to UK’s College of Engineering and in the health care space. Practice facilities for both the football and men’s basketball teams are named after Joe Craft. He also led donations for the Wildcat Coal Lodge, the dorm that houses members of the men’s basketball team. Kelly Craft was previously a member of the UK Board of Trustees. In Beshear’s statement, the governor scrutinized both Van Tatenhove’s new position leading the law school — he claims Van Tatenhove “was the only candidate not recommended by law school faculty” — and “the creation of a new $1 million job that has no defined duties,” which appeared to be a reference to UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart‘s new job at UK.

Kelly Craft, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, ran as a Republican to unseat Beshear in 2023. She lost in the GOP primary to former Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In addition to the Crafts, Kiki Courtelis, president of Town and Country Farms in Georgetown and a notable GOP donor in her own right, appears multiple times in Van Tatenhove’s financial disclosures as having provided gifts to the judge and his family or reimbursing them several times in financial disclosures from years 2014 to 2019. They were reimbursed for travel and lodging on two separate trips to Africa.

Look, it seems to me that if you go to the trouble of buying a law school dean, you should get what you paid for; to think otherwise is unAmerican. And if the qualifications for that position require a man to accept lavish gifts and travel to exciting and exotic places such as Africa and Charlotte, NC, then that’s what the qualifications require; who am I to know or even guess what is required of a dean?