Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who went to jail in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has lost her bid for reelection.
Democrat Elwood Caudill Jr. defeated Davis by a comfortable margin.
Davis made international news in 2015 when she stopped issuing marriage licenses days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, citing her religious beliefs and saying she was acting under “God’s authority.”
Gay and straight couples sued her, and a federal judge ordered Davis to issue the licenses.
She refused and spent five days jail. She was released only after her staff issued the licenses on her behalf but removed her name from the form. The state legislature later passed a law removing the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.
A federal judge later ruled Kentucky taxpayers must pay the couples’ legal fees of about $225,000.
Davis ran as a Republican, seeking a second four-year term to a job that pays her about $80,000 a year.
She was first elected as a Democrat in 2014, but later switched parties because she said the Democratic party “abandoned her.”
Caudill Jr., has worked for the county Property Valuation Administrator’s Office for 21 years.
Caudill said today he would treat everyone equally because he took an oath to “uphold the law of the land.”
