Vaché King brings a business lens to county judge race

Vaché King may have the broad­est back­ground of any Clark County can­di­date in this year’s gen­er­al election.

She is a pro­gram man­ag­er for a glob­al infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny and has pre­vi­ous­ly worked for defense con­trac­tors and the mil­i­tary as well as in bank­ing, health care, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. She holds degrees in para­le­gal stud­ies, busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and Christian education.

Although she has nev­er held pub­lic office, she believes her busi­ness back­ground would serve her well as coun­ty judge-executive.

“Whether it’s dif­fer­ent inter­ac­tions with peo­ple or under­stand­ing con­trac­tu­al lan­guage or the law … to pro­cure­ment — all of that has been a good train­ing ground for what­ev­er is to come,” King said in a recent interview.

She sees the role of judge-exec­u­tive as con­nect­ing with peo­ple in their capac­i­ties and mov­ing the team for­ward to enhance people’s lives.

“Sometimes it takes a bit longer, but what I’ve learned is that doing a holis­tic approach to things, you don’t miss things, you don’t lose peo­ple, and you’re look­ing at a basic end process …”

King is run­ning for coun­ty judge for the sec­ond time in four years. In 2022, she lost the Democratic nom­i­na­tion to Justin Charles, who switched par­ties and is now the Republican nom­i­nee for that office.

Asked why she thinks she would be a bet­ter can­di­date than Charles, a mas­ter elec­tri­cian, she didn’t boast.

“I don’t know that I’m a bet­ter can­di­date,” she said. “I would say that we have dif­fer­ent strengths.”

King said that she has “busi­ness acu­men,” and Charles has greater knowl­edge of con­struc­tion and infrastructure.

“I think we actu­al­ly com­ple­ment one anoth­er,” she said.

King said she came to know Charles when they ran against each oth­er the last time, and she likes him and his family.

Charles also has nev­er held pub­lic office before, and nei­ther can­di­date has any pri­or polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence except for the 2022 race.

As for why she is get­ting into pol­i­tics, King said at a cam­paign ral­ly: “I’m a woman of faith, and I believe that I am being led to run.”

“I prayed about it” and sought the coun­sel of peo­ple she trusts, and she and her hus­band, Dee King, believe “this is where we’re sup­posed to be,” she said.

“I also saw oppor­tu­ni­ties for things to be changed,” she added.

King sees oppor­tu­ni­ties to share resources and infor­ma­tion between city and coun­ty gov­ern­ment to make things bet­ter. She has done some research on oth­er coun­ty gov­ern­ments, main­ly around the issues of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty, she noted.

“I do believe it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to inform,” she commented.

King said she thinks one of the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing Clark County’s gov­ern­ment is its finan­cial con­di­tion. She said she has made sev­er­al open records requests and wants to do a “high-lev­el analy­sis” of the situation.

“There are some things I saw that do not make sense that I would like to do fur­ther research on to under­stand the full sto­ry,” she said.

King said she’s “not sure about a tax increase,” but there’s a need for a seri­ous assess­ment. She also said she believes the coun­ty can “find efficiencies.”

The can­di­date said she is “about growth” and would “love to see expansion.”

But rather than just expand­ing out­ward, she said, she would like to see some infill, includ­ing unoc­cu­pied build­ings repur­posed as offices and oth­er places of employment.

King admit­ted she doesn’t know a great deal about agri­cul­ture, but would like to talk with more farm­ers and landown­ers about how things affect them.

She said she would take a cau­tious approach on data cen­ters because she has some knowl­edge about them.

Data cen­ters use large amounts of water and elec­tric­i­ty and do not cre­ate many jobs in the long run, she said. And regard­less of what gov­ern­ments say about pro­tect­ing ratepay­ers from costs being passed on to them, “at some point, that does not work.”

“I wouldn’t want to bring any­thing in that would poten­tial­ly harm a com­mu­ni­ty,” she said. “After the hon­ey­moon peri­od, a lot of things set­tle, and that’s when you learn, it’s not worth it.”

King has said she is con­cerned about the prob­lem of sub­stance abuse and wants to see col­lab­o­ra­tion among local gov­ern­ments and oth­er enti­ties to address it.

She also wants to see more activ­i­ties for young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and more empha­sis on oppor­tu­ni­ties for them.

“I am super-pas­sion­ate about our youth,” she said.

The can­di­date is involved with youth advo­ca­cy as a mem­ber of the Clark County Equity Coalition.

King is a merg­ers and acqui­si­tions pro­gram man­ag­er for NTT DATA, a multi­na­tion­al infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ser­vice and con­sult­ing com­pa­ny based in Tokyo and Plano, Texas.

She has also worked for Lockheed Martin, L‑3 Communications, NANA Pacific, and for the Department of Defense at Bluegrass Station, serv­ing the National Guard’s weapons of mass destruc­tion civ­il sup­port teams. Some of her oth­er past employ­ers include TEK Systems, Toshiba, and Fifth Third Bank.

King said the biggest team she has ever led on a project includ­ed near­ly 200 people.

Her bachelor’s and two of her master’s degrees are from Sullivan College, and her Master of Christian Education degree in women’s min­istry is from Dallas Theological Seminary.

Originally from Lexington, King grad­u­at­ed from Lafayette Senior High School in 1993. She met her hus­band Dee, who is from Mount Sterling, at his church 34 years ago. Their old­est son, DeAnte, is in the Air Force, and he and his wife Samesha, are the par­ents of their three grand­chil­dren, Karter, Kennedy, and Kerrington. The couple’s younger sons are Dariel and Damion.