Mayor candidate against alcohol sales, gambling

Among Corbin’s three mayoral candidates this election season, 41-year-old Randy Smith takes pride in the fact that he offers a clear “alternative” for voters.
A supervisor of the Corbin area’s three McDonald restaurants, Smith’s background sets him apart from the rest. He’s owned or operated numerous restaurants including Subway, Pizza Inn, Dairy Queen, Blimpie and Quiznos. He’s a real estate investor, former youth pastor, world-traveling missionary, ordained minister and the founder of a private Christian school in Corbin. If elected, he would be Corbin’s first mayor fluent in Spanish.
Smith said he first moved to Corbin in 1992 and focuses on two changes that have happened in the town during that period as things he opposes, and will actively work to roll back: gambling and alcohol sales.
“No one has come out to be the point guy and say, you know what, I’m going to stand up because this is wrong,” Smith said. “I’m not saying I’m totally the opposite of those other two guys, but I am an alternative … something different.”
Smith said he vehemently opposed the City Commission’s decision in 1991 to allow a Kentucky Off-Track Betting parlor to locate in south Corbin. The city currently collects about $60,000 annually in taxes from the facility. Likewise, he said he was not in favor of a voter-approved referendum in 2003 that allowed qualifying restaurants to sell alcoholic beverages by the drink.
About $101,000 has been collected in tax revenue by the city since that measure passed.
“To me, that’s prostitution. I’m not selling out what I believe to be right and wrong for [tax revenue],” Smith said. “You cannot discuss alcohol and debate what are the good things about it … there is no debate. There is nothing good about it.”
He recounts the story of a close friend whose life he claims was ruined by Corbin’s Off-Track Betting facility.
“He got hooked on it, lost his house, lost his vehicles and got divorced. It ruined his life,” Smith said. “This happened because it was available and because he couldn’t control it.”
“Who’s going to clean up the mess? You know who cleans it up. It’s the churches. It’s the churches who have to stand up and clean up the mess when a man gambles away his car and house.”
Smith said he would try to oust the betting facility and would actively oppose any expansion of alcohol sales. He is in support of an effort for a new referendum to remove alcohol sales of any kind from the city.
On other issues, Smith said he supports a restaurant tax in the city, but says other options should also be explored.
“I don’t believe there have been enough alternatives put out there. I think the restaurant tax is an easy fix. I think it’s a very attractive thing to do,” Smith said. “I’m really not against a restaurant tax per se, I’m just against taxes. We all pay enough if not more than our fair share, but taxes are what it takes to run the government.”
Smith describes himself as a very devout Christian who is “100 percent in tune with the word of God.” If elected, he said his first action would be to proclaim a “season of fasting and praying to seek the face of God and to ask Him to give this city favor and mercy.”
“If we gain favor, we will gain more high paying jobs. If we receive God’s mercy, we may remain exempt from the ills of what many of the big cities have just come to accept; high crime rates, drugs and alcohol on every corner.”
Smith made his first foray into politics in 1994 when he ran for a seat on the city’s commission. He ran fifth overall garnering over 800 votes.
Aside from his duties with McDonald’s, Smith is an associate pastor at Harvest Community Assembly of God and was founder and former principal of Corbin Christian Academy. He is a graduate of Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio and has a Doctorate in Theology from Emmanuel Baptist University.
Smith has been married to his wife Sheila since 1982 and is the father of five children.