King rallies crowd on Main Street

Vaché King won’t be on the bal­lot until November, but she’s get­ting an ear­ly start run­ning for coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive. The only Democratic can­di­date held a gath­er­ing Feb. 26 at Thee Cake Carpenter on South Main Street to meet vot­ers, ral­ly sup­port­ers, and raise mon­ey for the gen­er­al election.

The meet-and-greet, which began at 5:30, had attract­ed about 30 peo­ple with­in the first half hour.

This is the sec­ond time King has run for the office. In 2022, she lost in the Democratic pri­ma­ry, but this year she has that lane to herself.

“I am real­ly excit­ed about mov­ing the coun­ty for­ward,” she said Thursday.

“I’m a woman of faith, and I believe that I am being led to run,” King said when asked why she was seek­ing the office.

Also, she men­tioned an inci­dent five or six years ago when she tried to get some­thing done about installing some street lights in a neigh­bor­hood, and “there wasn’t any move­ment about get­ting any­thing done, so that kind of sparked my interest.”

King, who grew up in Lexington, said she is from a “polit­i­cal fam­i­ly,” but she hadn’t “got­ten the bug” her­self until recently.

“But I’m excit­ed about run­ning,” she said.

King said her back­ground as a trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram man­ag­er would help pre­pare her for work in local gov­ern­ment because she under­stands admin­is­tra­tion and bud­gets and likes numbers.

“I have done merg­er acqui­si­tions for the past 20 years,” she said. “My respon­si­bil­i­ty is to merge pro­grams and … com­pa­nies together.”

King stud­ied at Dallas Theological Seminary and has a master’s in busi­ness from Sullivan University, where she also stud­ied pre-law, accord­ing to her social media accounts.

“I’m involved in a lot of orga­ni­za­tions and sit on some boards, so I’m able to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty and learn about peo­ple,” she remarked. “I’m sure there will be chal­lenges, because with any new thing there are chal­lenges, but I’m up to the chal­lenge,” she said.

King post­ed on her Facebook page after the meet­ing, thank­ing those who came and sup­port­ed her campaign.

“The con­ver­sa­tions we shared remind­ed me why this work mat­ters,” she said. “We talked about fam­i­lies, neigh­bor­hoods, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and the future we’re build­ing togeth­er, a future where every res­i­dent has access to dig­ni­ty, sup­port, and a thriv­ing qual­i­ty of life.”