She Denied Gay Man a Marriage License. Now He Wants Her Seat

The Kentucky county clerk who made headlines two years ago for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples is up for re-election next year—and one of the men she denied a license to has announced plans to run against her. Reuters reports that David Ermold of Morehead will run as a Democrat against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who said she was simply sticking to her Apostolic Christian beliefs in 2015 when she turned down Ermold's request for a license to marry his partner, David Moore. "It's official. I'm in!" Ermold, a University of Pikeville professor, wrote Wednesday in a Facebook post announcing his candidacy, adding afterward in a phone call to Reuters that "we need to restore the integrity of that office" and that "I wasn't treated fairly myself."

Davis spent five days behind bars in September 2015 for not issuing the license to Ermold and Moore, as well as other same-sex couples after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide that summer. After Kentucky lawmakers took county clerks' names off of the marriage licenses, Ermold and Moore received theirs and married on Sept. 26, 2015. Davis, who originally won her clerkship as a Democrat but switched to Republican after she got out of jail, was photographed Wednesday helping Ermold with his candidacy papers; a tweet featuring the photo went viral. "I shook his hand and told him, 'Congratulations, and may the best candidate win,'" Davis told Reuters in an email. As for Ermold, he tells ABC News: "The message I want to send out is one of bringing people back together. People are just hurt, people are angry, and we don't have to follow this path … We can change." (More Kim Davis stories.)