It was a victory decided by chance—and a clear sign of change.
Democrat Kristen Fryman secured a local Kentucky seat after defeating Republican Benny Ray Renner in a coin-toss tiebreaker. Afterward, she joked that the unusual win also left her 25 cents richer, according to reports.
Fryman and Renner each received 91 votes in the Robertson County race for magistrate, triggering a rarely used provision of Kentucky election law that requires a tied contest to be settled by lot, local outlets reported.
According to WEKU, officials used a quarter borrowed from the sheriff to determine the winner.
“Our county clerk flipped it, and Benny, my opponent, got the call because he was listed first on the ballot,” Fryman told the outlet. “He called heads, and it was tails.” She said a coin toss was certainly not the way she had imagined winning the election.
“We laughed about it, and I left here as the winner—with the quarter in my pocket,” Fryman said.
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The race was for a position on the county’s fiscal court, Kentucky’s equivalent of a county legislature. The body is responsible for setting the local budget and tax rates, according to the local outlet.
Fryman’s unusual victory preserves the Democrats’ majority on the board. The result came in a county where President Trump received roughly 80% of the vote in 2024, while Andy Barr won his Senate seat by more than 40 percentage points Tuesday after taking nearly 70% of the county’s vote.
Kentucky has seen other elections decided by the flip of a coin.
Earlier this year, a tied Republican primary in Union County was settled when officials flipped a silver dollar, Fox 56 reported.
Other coin tosses have determined the outcomes of a tied Democratic magistrate primary in Logan County, a city commission race in Hanson and a 2010 city council contest in Madisonville, according to local reports.
