Alison Grimes must contend with effort to reinstate alleged ethics violations

Kentucky’s Executive Branch Ethics Commission is seeking to reverse a judge’s ruling that cleared former Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes of ethics violation charges.

The commission’s request to the Kentucky Court of Appeals is expected to complicate for the time being any decisions that Grimes may have about returning to politics. 

Speculation about that intensified this week with Grimes’ attendance at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She has been mentioned as a possible candidate in 2026 for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell, who defeated her in 2014 to win reelection.

Grimes posted photos of herself on Facebook and  X (formerly Twitter) at the convention with the message “Let’s Go!” to show her support for Kamala Harris as president and Tim Walz as vice president.

The convention has featured keynote speeches by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, who lost to Republican Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race. The Clintons are close friends to Grimes’ father, former state Democratic Party chair and caterer Jerry Lundergan of Lexington. He was convicted of election finance violations in 2020 stemming from his daughter’s campaign against McConnell and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.

Repeated calls Wednesday and Thursday to Grimes seeking comment about the appeal and her appearance at the Democratic convention were not returned.

It was not clear who gave Grimes credentials to attend the convention but a Kentucky Democratic political operative said she was not a party delegate or alternate. Party spokesman Jonathan Levin said the party was not releasing the names of any delegate or alternate for security and privacy reasons. 

Andy Westberry, spokesman for the Kentucky Republican Party, said his party gave a list of names of delegates to its national convention last month in Milwaukee to reporters for planning purposes only and on an embargoed basis.

Would voters care?

Grimes, who was secretary of state from 2012 to 2020, may have success in politics again regardless of the resolution of the appeal to reinstate the ethics charges, said Stephen Voss, associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky.

“We’ve seen voters forgive candidates for legal troubles for years. Consider Donald Trump,” said Voss. 

The political scientist said voters tend to ignore the charges against the candidates unless they are personally affected by the charges. “How personally relevant to them is the legal problem?” he asked.

“Of course, it’s more advantageous to have a clean, legal slate and you always know your opponents are going to use everything they can to get you.”

Dewey Clayton, political science professor at the University of Louisville, said it’s “very possible” that Grimes can make a political comeback. 

“She has held public office. She comes from a political family with high name recognition,” he said.  “It’s never good to run for any public office under a cloud of suspicion and that cloud is still there to a degree for her with the appeal, which I was not aware of.”

The biggest obstacle for Grimes to run for any national office, said Clayton, is that she is a Democrat in “a very red” state. 

“But I think she can have a political future if she wants it, though there are some variables like the appeal that still need to be played out.”

Grimes’ attorney, J. Guthrie True of Frankfort, said, “We obviously would have preferred no appeal but we are confident in the circuit court ruling that was a complete vindication for her.”

Background on ethics allegations

The five-member Executive Branch Ethics Commission unanimously filed its appeal to the Court of Appeals on June 15, questioning several parts of the circuit court’s order. 

In April, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd cleared Grimes of the commission’s charges that she improperly ordered the downloading and distribution of voter registration data from her public office while she was Kentucky’s secretary of state. 

The commission had been investigating Grimes for several years. As secretary of state, Grimes was the state’s chief elections officer. In her position, she had access to data from the state Voter Registration System in the State Board of Elections.

Shepherd, in his 33-page order, agreed with Grimes’ arguments that the commission’s charges were barred by the five-year statute of limitations and that the record did not support a finding of any violations of the state executive branch’s code of ethics.

The commission had charged that Grimes violated the ethics code by sharing voter information without requiring an Open Records request or other “established process of government.”

Grimes submitted that all the voter data at issue was information in the public domain, that she had full legal authority and discretion as secretary of state to access and share such information. She claimed no statute or regulation was violated by the sharing of such public information. 

Shepherd faulted the Ethics Commission for not conducting an evidentiary hearing in the case to hear testimony from witnesses.

Because the commission acted against Grimes without a hearing, “the evidence in the record relied upon by Grimes is not disputed,” the judge’s order said.

He also said the complaint against Grimes was filed outside the applicable statute of limitations. 

He noted that the attorney general’s office and the Ethics Commission had been investigating for more than eight years allegations of misconduct by Grimes.

“After exhaustive investigation by both the attorney general and the Ethics Commission, there was no allegation concerning any substantive violation of any statute or regulation regarding the integrity of the voting roll,” the court order said. 

“There was no allegation of tampering with the voting rolls, no allegation of improper registration or voting, no allegation of any irregularity in any vote count or tabulation, no allegation of altering any identification of any voter, no allegation of any action that could impact the outcome of any election during Secretary Grimes’ tenure as chief state election officer.”

The order added that the attorney general’s office never brought any criminal charges against Grimes and that the matter was referred to the Ethics Commission. 

The only allegations pursued by the Ethics Commission were that Grimes allegedly acted unethically in accessing public information in the voter registration system by downloading voter information onto a thumb drive when she was a candidate for reelection.

The commission also looked at whether Grimes improperly shared information on new voter registrations for certain House districts in response to a request made informally through the office of the state House speaker without requiring a formal open records request or charging a fee. 

The judge noted that the commission’s final order did not dispute that Grimes would have lawful access to the voter data but that the crux of its complaint against Grimes was that she “downloaded the lists for a private purpose, without paying the mandatory fees or submitting sworn forms required by law.”

The court order said the commission failed to expressly allege what “private purpose” was served by placing voter data on a flash drive.

“What that ‘private purpose’ could have been is entirely unclear to the court,” the order said. “It further remains unclear what ‘established process of government’ was violated by Grimes’ act of downloading VRS data onto a flash drive. 

“This lack of detail relating to what ‘established government process’ was violated and how using a flash drive constitutes a violation” casts doubt that the commission was proving its allegation by clear and convincing evidence, Shepherd’s order said.  

The commission had said in November 2021 that Grimes must pay $10,000 in fines for two ethical violations pertaining to handling of voter data.

Susan Clary, executive director of the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, said the panel particularly is concerned about the statute of limitations in its daily work.

She said the commission is independent and that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear had no input on the panel’s decision to appeal the Grimes case. 

“The governor is covered by the ethics code so he must let it act independently,” she said. “No way can he be involved with its decisions.”

The Beshears and Lundergans have been involved in a decades-long political family rivalry that stems from state legislative races in the 1970s between the governor’s father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, and Jerry Lundergan. Both Steve and Andy Beshear, however, supported Grimes in her 2014 race against McConnell. 

Steve Beshear lost to McConnell in 1996. His son has been mentioned as a possible candidate in 2026 for McConnell’s U.S. Senate seat but the younger Beshear has said he wants to serve out the remainder of his term as governor, which ends in 2027. As Harris considered Beshear as a possible running mate, the governor said, “I love my job. I love serving the people of Kentucky. The only way I would consider something other than this current job is if I believed I could further help my people and to help this country.” 

McConnell, who will be 84 in 2026, has not yet said whether he will again seek reelection.

This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.