Independent candidate Curtis was challenged to enter governor’s race, form a campaign he feels can win

After expressing disappointment in state elections and candidates running in 2015, independent Drew Curtis says he was challenged to enter the race.

Curtis, a Lexington businessman and digital entrepreneur, recently turned in the signatures needed from his campaign to appear on the ballot as an independent candidate for governor of Kentucky.

The sole owner and chief operator of Fark.com, a popular news aggregator websites since he founded it 16 years ago, Curtis also serves as a member of Lexington’s Economic Development Investment Board and the University of Kentucky’s Innovation Network for Entrepreneurial Thinking. (Curtis speaks more on his background at the beginning of the interview below).

As for why he decided to jump into the 2015 governor’s race, Curtis said he was encouraged to run for office by people close to him and has worked to build a campaign he believes stands a chance of winning.

“I was complaining about the lack of quality candidates and the fact of why wouldn’t qualified people try to step up and get the job. Because this is more like being a CEO, yet we have to have an election process that’s more or less like the high school elections work,” Curtis said (at 1:30). “Government is arguably one of the more important things in our lives and for some reason we have a very primitive way of selecting candidates. And so I was saying more qualified people should run and I got challenged and they said ‘well, you should run.’”

Curtis said he was resistant to the idea of running for office at first but those around him pointed out that his background and experience could be helpful in a campaign.

“They said ‘here’s the deal, you like talking to new people, you have done a lot of media interviews so you know what that’s all about and you have good ideas. So if you are complaining about not having a good candidate to choose from and you are not willing to run then you have no right to complain.’ And I thought okay, that’s fine. I should probably do this,” Curtis said.

Watch the interview segment here:

More of the Kentucky Chamber’s interview with Curtis and the other candidates in the race, Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway, will be posted here on Bottom Line in the coming weeks.