https://www.facebook.com/winchestersun/videos/10155815908754011/

 

State Rep. Donna Mayfield’s remarks begin at approximately the 1:08 mark.

We have provided a full transcript below.

“Thank you. It’s good to see everyone here tonight. I want to thank everyone watching at home, those who are here, the Chamber, community education, the extension office, the newspaper, and our radio station for hosting this event.

It’s important as voters that we make informed decisions and this is a great crowd for the second night. It’s been an honor to represent Clark and Madison counties as your state representative for the past eight years. I’ve enjoyed helping folks with constituent issues as well as voting for legislation to strengthen Kentucky’s pension systems to ensure their stability for current and future retirees, for reforming our foster care and adoption systems to more quickly place Kentucky’s 8,000 foster children in loving homes in a quicker time frame, laws to protect our citizens from gang-related crimes, and more business-friendly regulations. Kentucky has the lowest unemployment rate in 22 years. For these and many other reasons I’m very proud, but what I’m not proud of is that politics has become too vicious.

People have become too nasty, and life has become too short to waste it on those things, and folks that enjoy spreading lies and vicious rumors as they hide behind the keyboard in the dark at night.

This past legislative session has been the darkest, nastiest session even the oldest members of the House of Representatives can recall, coming down to threatening and profane messages, senators’ homes being broken into, legislators pushed and cussed and their families being fearful. And unfortunately, this unacceptable behavior has carried its way, all the way down to Clark County as well.

There is absolutely no reason for people to behave in such a manner as I have seen, and the truth never has been a factor in the rhetoric that’s been spewed by many people here in Clark County over a political season. I have lost my love for public service. I do not want to be around the proud heartless, viciousness willfully carried out by so many people.

(Editor’s note: At this point in the transcript, Mayfield’s two-minute time limit for opening statement’s had been reached the moderator was approaching the stage.)

I need to go on for a second. This is a public service.

I no longer have room for this in me and my family’s life. Therefore I am withdrawing my name from the primary ballot for state representative and as I say to some of those people I congratulate my friend Les Yates on his representation on the Republican ticket in November and I encourage you to support him.

I’d like to thank those people who have supported me, helped me or prayed for me in my family and I will remember you as my husband and I go on into the next phase of our life.

And to those who have shot from the hip without facts or reason, armed only with venom, rumors, and judgment in your hearts, I pray that you will find a way to rid yourself of that darkness.

Thank you and goodnight.”