Charlie Castlen did not come to public service from politics. He came to it from a ledger book.
He has spent more than forty years around balance sheets — in banking, in public accounting, and in government. A graduate of Brescia University and a self-employed certified public accountant, Charlie built his practice the way he has built everything since: one client, one handshake, one balanced ledger at a time. He knows exactly what a dollar is worth, because he has spent a career accounting for other people’s.
Charlie is a Republican. He has served Daviess County as Judge/Executive since 2023.
Experience that shows up
in the budget.
Charlie has spent his public service on the two bodies that actually set this community’s budgets — and he read every line of both.
City Commissioner
Served on the Owensboro City Commission, including as Mayor Pro Tem — where he learned the city budget the way he learned every other set of books, line by line.
County Commissioner, Central Division
County roads, county budgets, and county problems — the unglamorous work that teaches you where every dollar goes before you are the one signing for it.
Daviess County Judge/Executive
The county’s first new chief executive in more than a decade. He took office with a balanced budget, a stack of deferred projects, and no interest in raising anyone’s taxes to pay for them.
How he runs
the county.
Under Charlie’s leadership the Fiscal Court cut the county property tax rate to 12.2¢ per $100 — the lowest since 1975, including the largest one-year decrease since 1979. The county operates on a balanced budget and carries virtually no debt.
In the same four years Daviess County landed more than $415 million in new investment and 727 new jobs, completed a countywide fiber broadband build reaching up to 20,000 rural homes and businesses, earned the best fire protection rating in county history, and put a new Senior Community Center within reach of opening. None of it required a tax increase.
Ask Charlie how that adds up and the answer is not complicated: you do not spend money you do not have, and you do not sit on money that ought to be working.
A man of faith
and integrity.
Charlie Castlen is a man of integrity. He does what he says he is going to do, he gives people a straight answer, and he does not make a decision he cannot explain to the people paying for it.
He is a certified public accountant, and the habits of that profession are the ones he brought to the courthouse. The numbers are the numbers. They get written down. Anyone is entitled to look at them. The county budget is public. The Fiscal Court meets in the open and its votes are on the record. Charlie would rather a resident go look at the numbers than take anybody’s word for them, including his.
Charlie is a lifelong Catholic, and his faith is not something he keeps separate from the job. It is where the standard came from. He handled other people’s money for a long time before he ever handled the county’s, and the rule never changed: tell the truth, keep your word, and treat a dollar that belongs to somebody else more carefully than one that belongs to you.
“This county has real momentum, and I want every resident to see exactly where that progress has come from and where we’re headed next.”Charlie Castlen
Family and community.
Charlie and Lisa have been married 41 years and built their life together in Daviess County. Lisa spent her career as a schoolteacher in the Owensboro Catholic system. Together they raised three kids, Sarah, Theresa, and Daniel, right here at home, and those kids are grown now.
Charlie’s involvement in this community goes back a long way, long before his first campaign. Over the years he’s served on the board of the Boulware Center Mission, Owensboro’s oldest homeless shelter, volunteered and coached through Blessed Mother Church, and put in time with the Knights of Columbus, the Chamber of Commerce, and Junior Achievement. That’s the kind of track record that doesn’t come from showing up during an election year. It comes from showing up for years before anyone was asking for a vote.
Four more years of the same discipline.
Help keep this record working for Daviess County.