Beshear appoints two longtime supporters to UK Board of Trustees
FRANKFORT – Gov. Andy Beshear has filled two vacancies on the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees with longtime supporters as he works to exercise more control over the direction of the state’s flagship university.
In an executive order filed June 26 – and effective July 1 – Beshear appointed Ruth Cecelia Day as an alumni representative on the board, replacing Paula Leach Pope whose term has expired. He also appointed Mitchel Denham, to replace longtime trustee Robert Vance.
Day served as state government’s chief information officer from the start of the Beshear administration until the end of 2024 when she retired.
Day, who calls both Madisonville and Jacksonville Beach, Florida home, is a certified public accountant and a graduate of UK’s Gatton College of Business and Economics. Before joining the Beshear administration, Day worked 29 years in financial management positions for Landstar System Inc., a transportation services corporation based in Jacksonville.
Like most Beshear appointees to the UK board, she has been a massive donor to Beshear’s political causes. Kentucky Lantern’s analysis of online campaign finance records shows Day and her late husband James Martin, gave $153,200 to Beshear’s campaigns and political committees supporting his campaigns.
Day told Kentucky Lantern in a brief phone interview that she was honored by the appointment and did not believe political contributions had any effect on Beshear’s decision.
Both Day and Denham were appointed to terms that expire June 30, 2032.
A native of Maysville, Denham is a graduate of the UK College of Law and a former assistant deputy Kentucky attorney general who currently works in the Louisville office of McBrayer PLLC.
While working in the private sector in recent years, Denham has maintained some ties to Beshear and the Kentucky Democratic Party. He is the treasurer, agent and a director for the Beshear non-profit First Saturday in May, which manages the governor’s Kentucky Derby festivities. And in 2023, Denham represented the Kentucky Democratic Party in discussions with campaign finance regulators after London Mayor Randall Weddle admitted to making numerous excess donations to the party.
Denham is also a donor to Beshear, having made $22,251 in contributions to Beshear political causes since 2018, online contribution data sources show.
As Beshear blasts politics at UK, he continues to appoint big donors to UK board
In response to a voicemail from Kentucky Lantern Denham released a statement saying he was “honored and grateful” for the appointment.
Last month, the Kentucky Lantern reported that Beshear’s 16 appointees to the UK board had contributed nearly $1.7 million to his various political committees since 2013. Now, the 18 appointees have contributed more than $1.84 million.
The UK board has 20 voting members, 13 of them directly appointed by the governor. Denham is one of these direct appointments.
The governor also appoints three alumni members, but must choose one of the three top vote getters in an election overseen by the alumni association. Day finished second in the alumni election and was one of the three names Beshear could consider for the appointment to the alumni member term.
Two board members are chosen by the faculty, one by the staff, and the student body president serves on the board to represent students
The appointments are a key step by Beshear who, in a surprising social media post in April, said he was losing confidence in UK’s leadership under President Eli Capilouto because of two particular actions – the creation of an ill-defined job for retiring Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart that paid $1 million a year, and the appointment of U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove as dean of the law school without full approval of the school’s faculty.
Beshear said he was worried that these decisions were “related to certain donors pushing partisan and undue influence on the university.”
Since then, Barnhart has stepped away from the new job, but Capilouto has stood firm behind Van Tatenhove’s appointment, saying that under governance changes made in 2024 the UK Board of Trustees no longer must approve any appointment of the law school dean.
Beshear said later at a press conference, “I’m going to take a real close look at the board of trustees to make sure we’re getting real strong oversight, and they should absolutely walk back what’s claimed to be the 2024 action that moved these decisions to the president.”
Last week the board voted to restore the dean-appointing authority to the board, an action that does not affect Van Tatenhove’s appointment but will apply to future appointments of deans, the Herald-Leader reported.
Day and Denham are two of four new members to the board. Nick Pace, of Louisville, the new student body president, has recently joined as the board’s student member. And Nathan Vanderford, an associate professor of toxicology and cancer biology in the College of Medicine, was recently elected to be one of the two faculty members of the board.
Beshear is expected to name a replacement soon for longtime trustee Ron Geoghegan, whose term expired on June 30.