Bevin’s Lt. Gov. Is Suing Him, Taking Their Feud Into The Courtroom

Today, the feud between Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and his handpicked Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton reached a new battleground: the courtroom. Hampton is suing Bevin over the unauthorized firings that have locked their offices into a months-long bitter spat.
Last week, Hampton said she never talked to Bevin about the dismissals and that she is standing by her staff.
The Bevin-Hampton squabble shows the rift in the Kentucky GOP isn’t going away. Hampton is incredibly popular among Kentucky’s Tea Party activists—and they aren’t forgetting this feud.
The spokesman of the United Kentucky Tea Party said, “There are a whole lot of tea party people who got out and worked for Matt Bevin’s campaigns in 2014 and 2015 who will not do that this year.” And one of the founders of the Owensboro Tea Party bashed Bevin, saying, “Jenean Hampton is a constitutional conservative. Matt is just a damn Republican.”
Matt Bevin hobbled out of the Republican primary in May as a sitting incumbent…and this feud certainly isn’t going to help win over the 48 percent of voters who chose another candidate.
“Matt Bevin betrayed his own lieutenant governor and now he’s going to have to answer for it in court,” said DGA Communications Director David Turner. “Bevin’s strategy of reaching out to the 48 percent of Republicans who voted against him in the primary clearly failed. The longer this lawsuit drags on, the harder it will be for Bevin to unite his party before November—and that spells trouble for the most unpopular governor in the country.”