Ken Lowe, Jr., Chair of West Virginia Racing Commission, Dies Suddenly

Kenneth F. Lowe, Jr., the colorful and sometimes controversial chairman of the West Virginia Racing Commission (WVRC), died suddenly earlier this week. His passing was first reported Sept. 4 in a remembrance editorial in the Journal-News of Martinsburg, West Virginia.

Lowe was in his mid-70s, and no cause of death had been announced prior to publication of this story.

On Thursday, a staffer at the WVRC confirmed Lowe's passing to TDN, but declined to speak on the record about the circumstances of the chairman's death or about his recent health, citing a desire to let family members release an obituary first.

Lowe had just presided over the WVRC's monthly meeting last Thursday, Aug. 29.

Lowe, who was a decades-long horse owner and breeder, lived in Shepherdstown, about 12 miles north of Charles Town Races.

According to a biography that Lowe provided to TDN in 2022 when he submitted a letter to the editor, he spent his earliest years around horses, then began working in the mutuels at Charles Town in his teens until he graduated from Shepherd College in his hometown of Shepherdstown.

Lowe wrote that his love for the track led him to “scratch” the idea of attending law school decades ago, and he instead enrolled in the New York Jockey Club School for Racing Officials.

For a time in the 1970s, Lowe worked in various racing official capacities. But instead of officiating races at mid-Atlantic tracks for a full-time living, Lowe cultivated an outsized community presence in his hometown and embarked on a career in real estate and business development.

In 1997, Lowe was recognized as West Virginia Real Estate Entrepreneur of the Year, and in 2000, Lowe was credited with being instrumental in bringing President Bill Clinton to the state's eastern panhandle for peace talks.

In 2004, Lowe took what he described as a “deep dive” into owning and actively managing a Thoroughbred racing stable and breeding operation in Maryland.

Lowe later served as president of the Charles Town Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (CTHBPA), and was appointed as a state racing commissioner in 2017 after having served on the transition team of Gov. Jim Justice.

Lowe's appointment as a commissioner and his tenure on the board was controversial at times, in part because he had an abrasive history with Charles Town management.

In 2011, when Lowe was president of the CTHBPA, track management ejected him from the property for a violation of Charles Town's house rule against distributing political flyers. Six years later, when he was a commissioner, Lowe told TDN he had won an undisclosed court judgment from track management when he challenged that ejection.

Ten months after his appointment to the WVRC in 2017, Lowe led a failed bid to withhold commission approval for a $1.2-million purse for the GII Charles Town Classic, the track's signature race. He told TDN in an interview that he was not acting out of any sort of a “grudge,” but that he just thought the money could be better spent on bolstering local racing.

Lowe's resistance to the seven-figure purse–which had been contractually approved by the Charles Town horsemen–almost scuttled the running of the 2018 Classic. But Gov. Justice, reacting to well-publicized backlash, vowed to have the WVRC's decision reversed, and the commission subsequently re-voted to approve full funding for that stakes.

Lowe had a habit of referring to himself in the third person when he launched into long, sometimes quixotic, soliloquies at WVRC meetings. He was vociferously on-record as a staunch pro-Lasix supporter for Thoroughbreds, and was emphatically against the concept of an entity like the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) overseeing racing in West Virginia.

Lowe advocated for the 2022 federal lawsuit led by the states of West Virginia and Louisiana that still hasn't been resolved, but has resulted in an injunction barring HISA rules from being implemented in those two states.

Prior to the advent of HISA, Lowe also publicly chafed at West Virginia's adoption of certain model rules set forth by the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI). Lowe served on that organization's board of directors, and he seemed to relish his role as an iconoclast member.

“I'm so damn outnumbered I feel like the lone ranger sitting there,” Lowe said in 2021 of the ARCI meetings. “I think differently than many of those fine folks do.”

Yet during his time as the WVRC chairman, Lowe also repeatedly emphasized a compassionate core belief that he needed to stand up for smaller-scale racing at Charles Town and Mountaineer Park, whose horsemen he often portrayed as needing protection from larger, national entities that had more power in the sport.

“I can listen to what California wants and what New York wants and what Kentucky says. But one size doesn't always fit all,” Lowe said during one impassioned speech at a  2021 commission meeting. “West Virginia doesn't want to be an outlier. I understand that. But at the same time, I can't agree to do something just because everyone else has. I'm not geared that way. If it's best for everybody, I'll go along with it. But I just can't let something happen that's not fair to the West Virginia horsemen at Mountaineer or Charles Town.”

The journalist Toni Milbourne, who authored Lowe's remembrance editorial in the Journal-News, recalled his presence like this:

“His voice and his passion for all things West Virginia will resound long after this time of when he has physically left this earth. He was an advocate for so many things–so many causes–and there are so many who will miss his efforts and his strength. The horsemen in our county and in our state come to mind as Kenny was their biggest champion–fighting for Thoroughbred racing to remain viable here and for those in that industry to be well cared for. They had no stronger champion.”