Mark Metcalf was a fresh-faced college graduate when he went to work on the first Congressional campaign of Hal Rogers back in 1980. The young Republican was tasked with delivering campaign materials across the 5th District and reporting back to Rogers about what he heard from would-be constituents.
After the election Metcalf followed Rogers to Washington, D.C., where he served as a junior legislative assistant responsible for foreign affairs and defense issues.
“With Hal Rogers, you got to see how it’s done right every time,” says Metcalf. “You learn how to take care of people when you work for Hal Rogers.”
Metcalf says he’s carried those lessons with him throughout his own career in public service as a state and federal prosecutor as well as an immigration judge in Florida. The Lancaster native also served six terms as Garrard County attorney before being elected state treasurer last November. He says the diligence with which he campaigned across more than 100 counties was fueled in part by a run for Congress in 1996. In the race to unseat then 6th District Congressman Scotty Baesler, a Democrat, Metcalf lost the Republican primary by a mere four votes.
“That was a dear lesson in politics,” says Metcalf. “I’m not going to blame anybody except the guy in the mirror. I should’ve gotten four more votes.”
Priorities for the Treasurer’s Office
Learning the ropes of his new job, which he won by more than 185,000 votes, Metcalf is meeting with treasurer’s office staff and the members of the various boards on which he will sit. The treasurer serves on the Kentucky Lottery Board, the State Investment Commission, the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority, and the board of the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System among others.
In one of those meetings, Metcalfe says he learned that the lottery garnishes wages for staff who may owe back taxes or child support. He says that got him wondering if the treasurer’s office could do something similar by withholding for child support or for crime victims.
“What is a child support order? It’s a court order. What is a victim’s restitution order? It’s a court order,” he says. “So once we have in hand a valid court order, let’s withhold for those things and restore victims to their property and give child-support recipients what they should be receiving.”
Metcalf says he also wants to advocate for vocational education in the commonwealth by encouraging the Higher Education Assistance Authority to offer financial aid to students wishing to earn a trade certification rather than a college degree.
“A young person coming out of trade school can make $40, $50, $60,000 a year after an apprenticeship, and (that’s) a good education that Kentucky can provide and can help underwrite,” he says.
A major campaign issue for Metcalf was his opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and to socially responsible investing strategies known as ESG (for environmental, social, and governance). He argues DEI unfairly champions one ethnicity or group over another. Instead, he says employers should hire and promote based on excellence regardless of the person’s background.
The Republican also contends the ESG movement has hurt Kentucky’s coal industry and pushes alternative energy sources that are more expensive than coal but are not as reliable as a source of electricity.
“When they attempt to minimize the importance or cancel, let’s put it that way, fossil fuels, we need to look at what that’s accomplishing,” says Metcalf. “For us to buy into the green technologies and the idea that the earth is being choked by carbon emissions, it’s almost become a false religion in my opinion. What we need to do is stand tall and strong for fossil fuel producers.”
In addition to mining its coal reserves, Metcalf says the state should also explore nuclear energy, which he contends could draw upon Kentucky’s abundant freshwater resources.
“We’re an ideal spot for Kentucky to be one of the great energy producers here in the United States,” he says.
Finally, Metcalf pledges to maintain a lean operation within the treasurer’s office. He says his budget request to state lawmakers preserves current staffing levels within his agency. The only new funding request, he says, was to purchase a new printer and an envelope sealer for cutting and mailing state checks.
“Most agencies tend to grow,” says the treasurer. “What we’re trying to do is grow our business without growing the size of the office, and that’s something I promised to do.”
Making a Republican Kentucky
Looking at Kentucky’s political landscape, Metcalf credits U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell for transforming the state from its historic Democratic roots to a Republican stronghold. Since McConnell’s election to the Senate in 1984, Metcalf says the minority leader has served as a bulwark of fiscal and social conservatism at a time when he says the Democratic Party has grown more liberal and less grounded in spiritual values.
“It really begins with Mitch McConnell and that steady continuum of conservative leadership that he has offered Kentucky,” says Metcalf.
