Request By:
Mr. Boyd Holbrook
Box #1
Auxier, Kentucky 41602
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of January 3 in which you request an opinion concerning the following:
"Can a state employee in the Department of Education (employee number 12843), run for public office, such as the office of magistrate of a county, and still retain his position as an employee in the department of education? "
If the state employee in question is a merit employee he could not become a candidate for any public office without violating the provisions of KRS 18.310(4) with the exceptions therein enumerated, which do not include the office of magistrate. For your information subsection (4) reads as follows:
"(4) No employe in the classified service shall be a member of any national, state, or local committee of a political party, or an officer or member of a committee of a partisan political club, or a candidate for nomination or election to any paid public office, or shall take part in the management or affairs of any political party or in any political campaign, except to exercise his right as a citizen privately to express his opinion and to cast his vote. Officers or employes of the classified service may be candidates for and occupy a town or school district office if the office is one for which no compensation, other than a per diem payment, is provided and the election is on a nonpartisan basis."
On the other hand, if the employee is not under the merit system there would be no constitutional or statutory provision against such employee becoming a candidate for any public office without first resigning his position unless the governor has issued a policy statement to the contrary.