Widow chosen as nominee after suicide of lawmaker

Associated Press

SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky.

The widow of a Kentucky lawmaker who killed himself following a sexual-assault allegation has been nominated by Republicans to fill the seat he held.

Bullitt County GOP Chairman Paul Ham said a vote was taken Thursday night to nominate Rebecca Johnson.

Gov. Matt Bevin set a Feb. 20 special election to find a replacement for Republican Dan Johnson, whose body was found this month with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He died a day after denying that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl in 2013. Johnson was in his first term representing a House district south of Louisville.

Rebecca Johnson will face former state Rep. Linda Belcher. The Bullitt County Democratic Party announced Thursday that Belcher was selected as the nominee by a unanimous vote.

Johnson was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2016 amid a wave of Republican victories that gave the GOP control of the chamber for the first time in nearly a century. During the campaign, he defied calls from Republican leaders for him to drop out of the race after he compared Barack and Michelle Obama to monkeys in a Facebook post.

As a freshman legislator, Johnson sponsored bills having to do with religious liberty and teaching the Bible in public schools, but he was mostly out of the spotlight.