Matt Bevin facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Matt Bevin
Bevin in 2017
62nd Governor of Kentucky
In office December 8, 2015 – December 10, 2019
Lieutenant	Jenean Hampton
Preceded by	Steve Beshear
Succeeded by	Andy Beshear
Personal details
Born	Matthew Griswold Bevin (1967-01-09) January 9, 1967 (age 57) Denver, Colorado, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Glenna Bevin ​ ​ (m. 1996; div. 2023)​
Children	10
Education	Washington and Lee University (BA)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army
Years of service	1989–1993
Rank	Captain
Unit	5th Infantry Division

Matthew Griswold Bevin (/ˈbɛvɪn/; born January 9, 1967) is an American businessman and politician who served as the 62nd governor of Kentucky from 2015 to 2019. He was the third Republican elected to that office since World War II. He is currently the CEO of Neuronetrix Solutions, LLC.

Born in Denver, Colorado, and raised in Shelburne, New Hampshire, Bevin earned a bachelor's degree at Washington and Lee University in 1989. He served four years in the U.S. Army and attained the rank of captain. Bevin moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 1999 while working in the financial management industry. He later took over leadership of the Connecticut-based family business, Bevin Brothers Manufacturing Company, one of the last remaining American bell foundries.

In 2013, Bevin announced he would challenge Kentucky's senior U.S. Senator, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 Republican primary. Although Bevin had the support of various groups aligned with the Tea Party Movement, McConnell attacked him repeatedly for inconsistencies in his public statements and policy positions and defeated Bevin by almost 25 percentage points. Bevin announced he would seek the governorship in 2015 and won a four-way Republican primary by 83 votes. He defeated the state's attorney general, Democratic nominee Jack Conway, in the general election.

..... As governor, Bevin made headlines for his criticism of schoolteachers and for teacher demonstrations against his efforts to cut pensions in public education.

Bevin lost his re-election campaign to Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear in a close race. After requesting a recount, Bevin conceded the election on November 14, 2019. ..... On December 23, 2019, it was reported that the FBI had questioned state representative Chris Harris about Bevin's pardons and on January 2, 2020, Attorney General Daniel Cameron asked the FBI to investigate the pardons.

Early life and education

Born January 9, 1967, in Denver, Colorado, Matt Bevin was the second of six children of Avery and Louise Bevin. He grew up in the rural town of Shelburne, New Hampshire, in a small farmhouse heated by wood-fired stoves. His father worked at a wood mill, and his mother worked part-time in a hospital admissions department. The family raised livestock and grew much of their own food. At age six, Bevin made money selling seeds to his neighbors. He credits his involvement in 4-H, where he served as president of the local and county chapters and as a member of the state teen council, with developing his public speaking and leadership skills. He was also involved with the county's Dairy Club.

Initially attending a small Christian school, in tenth grade Bevin enrolled as a student at Gould Academy, a private high school across the state line in Bethel, Maine. He paid his tuition through a combination of financial aid and wages from an on-campus dishwashing job and various summer jobs. After graduation, he attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, on a partial ROTC scholarship. During his matriculation, he studied abroad in Japan and became fluent in Japanese. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies in 1989.

After taking eight weeks off to complete a 3,800-mile (6,100 km) bicycle ride from Oregon to Florida, Bevin enlisted in the United States Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. In 1990, he completed a six-week Junior Officer Maintenance Course at Fort Knox in Kentucky. He later commented that the area reminded him of where he grew up, and that if he had a chance to raise a family there, he would like to do so. He was assigned to the 25th Field Artillery Regiment of the Army's 5th Mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Polk in Louisiana. During his assignment, he also trained at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, completing 40 credit hours of Central Michigan University coursework offered on base. He rose to the rank of captain – earning the Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Parachutist Badge, and Army Commendation Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster – before joining the Army Reserve in 1993. He left the Individual Ready Reserve in 2003.

Business career

After leaving active duty in 1993, Bevin worked as a financial consultant for SEI Investments Company in Pennsylvania and Boston, then served as a vice president with Putnam Investments. In 1999, he was offered a stake in National Asset Management and moved to Kentucky to take the job. After the firm was sold in 2003, Bevin recruited a group of managers from National City Corp. to found Integrity Asset Management. The company was handling more than $1 billion in investments when Bevin sold it to Munder Capital Management of Michigan in 2011.

In 2008, Bevin took over management of the struggling Bevin Brothers Manufacturing Company of East Hampton, Connecticut. Founded in 1832 by Bevin's great-great-great-grandfather and remaining in the family continuously since, Bevin Bros. is the last American company that exclusively manufactures bells. Collectively, the family decided that Bevin was the family member who could keep the company solvent. There are indications that Bevin became the company's president in 2008, though he says it was in 2011. By 2012, the company's delinquent taxes had been paid.

A lightning strike sparked a fire that destroyed the factory on May 27, 2012. Although he carried little more than liability insurance on the business and his losses were compounded by looters who stole 4,500 bells, Bevin vowed to rebuild, telling the Hartford Courant, "I'm a Bevin, and Bevins make bells." In late June 2012, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy announced that Bevin Brothers would receive $100,000 in grants from the state's Small Business Express program to assist in the rebuilding effort. Flanked by Senator Richard Blumenthal, Bevin announced in July 2012 that he would sell souvenirs including T-shirts, and bells and bricks salvaged from the gutted factory, to raise additional funds for rebuilding. Working from a temporary location, the company resumed limited production in September 2012.

Bevin is a partner at Waycross Partners, an investment management firm in Louisville, Kentucky.

In November 2022, Bevin was named the chief executive officer of Neuronetrix Solutions, LLC.

Political campaigns

Bevin said that in 2011, Mitch McConnell recruited him to challenge incumbent Democrat John Yarmuth to represent Kentucky's 3rd congressional district in 2012. McConnell's chief of staff said Bevin requested the meeting and McConnell never asked Bevin to enter the race. Ultimately, Bevin and his advisors decided that legislative redistricting had made Yarmuth's district unwinnable for a Republican, and Bevin chose not to run.

2014 U.S. Senate campaign

On July 24, 2013, Bevin announced that he would challenge McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader and a five-term incumbent, in the 2014 Republican primary because he did not believe that McConnell was conservative enough. Despite a Wenzel Strategies poll immediately following Bevin's announcement that showed him polling only 19.9% to McConnell's 58.9%, the National Journal listed McConnell number nine on its list of ten lawmakers who could lose a primary election in 2014.

Result and aftermath

On election day, Bevin garnered 125,759 votes – 35.4% of the vote – to McConnell's 213,666 votes (60.2%); the remaining votes were scattered among three lower-profile candidates. In his concession speech, Bevin opined "there is zero chance that the solutions for what ails us is going to come from the Democratic Party", but did not endorse McConnell. He appeared onstage with McConnell on a few occasions during the general election campaign but steadfastly refused to explicitly endorse him. During his remarks at an October 29 Restore America rally, Bevin said "I say with all due respect to a lot of folks who might say otherwise, sometimes we might need to get over it and move on. We have new races to run and new decisions to make. There is too much at stake." Asked if the comment amounted to an endorsement of McConnell, Bevin told reporters, "You've got ears." McConnell defeated Grimes in the general election, and Bevin eventually told reporters that he voted for McConnell.

2015 gubernatorial primary

Bevin speaking in an AARP voter guide video, September 2015

In June 2014, WKMS reported that Bevin had remained politically active after his defeat by McConnell, and an email to his followers calling on Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat, to denounce new carbon regulations issued by the EPA fueled speculation that Bevin would seek the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2015. The station also cited an anonymous source that said Bevin would campaign for Rand Paul's Senate seat in 2016 if Paul's expected presidential bid kept him from running for re-election. An August 2014 survey by Public Policy Polling showed that 25% of Republicans wanted Bevin to be the party's gubernatorial nominee, ahead of declared candidates James Comer (20%) and Hal Heiner (18%).

On January 27, 2015, the last day for candidates to file, Bevin announced he would seek the Republican nomination for governor. During his announcement, he introduced his running mate, Jenean Hampton, a Tea Party activist who lost her bid to unseat State Representative Jody Richards the previous year. Bevin joined a field that included Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, former Louisville Councilman Hal Heiner, and former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott. The National Journal predicted that Bevin would draw support away from Comer, the early front-runner, who had been appealing to Tea Party groups and already secured Congressman Massie's endorsement. The crowded primary was also projected to damage the Republican nominee's chances in the general election, since Attorney General Jack Conway was the only major Democratic candidate, allowing him to conserve resources for the general election. McConnell allies also predicted that Bevin's refusal to endorse McConnell would hurt him with primary voters.

Result and aftermath

On election night, May 19, the Associated Press reported that Bevin received 70,479 votes, just 83 more than Comer; Heiner garnered 57,948 and Scott received 15,364. At approximately 10:00 pm (EDT) that night, Comer told his supporters, "I owe it to our supporters to ask for a canvass to this election." The recanvass showed that Bevin remained 83 votes ahead, and Comer conceded the nomination to Bevin, foregoing a full recount.

2015 gubernatorial general election

In the general election, Bevin faced state Attorney General Jack Conway, marking the first gubernatorial race in state history featuring two candidates from Louisville, the state's largest city. The Kentucky Democratic Party attempted to play up the fractures in the Republican Party over Bevin's candidacy, launching a web site featuring fellow Republicans' criticisms of Bevin, drawn mostly from his primary race against McConnell. Bevin responded with a web site tying Conway to President Barack Obama, who was very unpopular in Kentucky, saying that Conway would support environmental regulations that harm the coal industry and support the Affordable Care Act, which was also unpopular in the state, despite its nationally praised insurance exchange. McConnell endorsed Bevin.

Result

On August 10, Fark founder Drew Curtis submitted the requisite petition signatures to appear on the gubernatorial ballot as an Independent candidate with his wife, Heather, as his running mate. In early October, the first poll released after Curtis entered the field showed Conway leading with 42 percent support among likely voters, compared to Bevin's 37 percent and Curtis' 7 percent. Fifteen percent of those polled were undecided. Conway's five-percentage-point margin held up a month later; just a week before the election, a Bluegrass poll showed 45 percent support for Conway, 40 percent for Bevin, and 6 percent for Curtis. The Lexington Herald-Leader noted that Bevin had trailed in every publicly released poll, leading political analyst Stephen Voss to conclude, on the eve of the election, that "There's little doubt at this point that, based on the polling methodology these folks use, Conway is ahead." Voss warned, however, that a combination of systematic polling error and late voter decision making could prove the polling wrong.

On November 3, Bevin garnered 511,771 votes (53%) to Conway's 426,944 (44%) and Curtis' 35,629 (3%). Bevin was only the third Republican elected governor of Kentucky since World War II, and running mate Jenean Hampton became the first African-American elected to any statewide office in Kentucky. Conway had counted on strong support from the state's urban areas, but managed smaller-than-expected margins in Jefferson, Fayette, and Franklin counties – home to Louisville, Lexington, and Frankfort, respectively – while turnout on Bevin's behalf was strong in more traditionally Republican rural areas. Ultimately, Conway carried only 14 of Kentucky's 120 counties, and observers wrote that the loss likely ended his political career. Republicans also won the races for treasurer, auditor, and agricultural commissioner. Analyst Ronnie Ellis speculated that the Republicans' victories set the stage for the party to take control of the state House of Representatives in the November 2016 elections. With an eight-seat majority, the Kentucky House was the last legislative body in the South controlled by Democrats.

2019 gubernatorial election

On June 1, 2018, McConnell urged Bevin to run for reelection, and on January 25, 2019, Bevin announced that he would run for a second term, choosing State Senator Ralph Alvarado as his running mate over current Lieutenant Governor Jenean Hampton. Bevin was renominated by the Republican Party of Kentucky in a primary election on May 21, 2019, as its candidate for governor in 2019, while Kentucky's outgoing Attorney General Andy Beshear, son of Bevin's predecessor Steve Beshear, won the Democratic nomination.

Bevin narrowly lost his re-election campaign to Beshear. Bevin refused to concede, citing what he called "irregularities" and referring to a "process"; court approval would be needed for a full recount, and Kentucky's election recount law does not appear to apply for gubernatorial elections. Bevin claimed, without evidence, that "thousands of absentee ballots that were illegally counted", people were "incorrectly turned away" at the polls, "a number of [voting] machines that didn't work properly", and ballots were stored in open boxes. Fellow Republican lawmakers in Kentucky expressed skepticism of Bevin's claims, and asked him to substantiate the claims or concede.

On November 6, Bevin asked for a recanvass, which involves a review of votes rather than a recount; the recanvass took place on November 14. According to the Kentucky state constitution, a governor must be sworn in on the December 10 following the election. Kentucky's outgoing Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes declared Beshear the winner. On November 6, Beshear hired J. Michael Brown to lead his transition team. Should a candidate contest the election results, the state legislature would determine the winner after hearing a report from a randomly selected 11-member committee from the House (8) and Senate (3). This process, which is enforced through the Goebel Election Law, has only been used once, during the 1899 Kentucky gubernatorial election. However, Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers and other Republican members of the Kentucky state legislature expressed skepticism of Bevin's voter fraud claim and urged Bevin on November 7 to concede if the recanvass does not go in his favor. On November 11, 2019, Republican U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell announced that "all indications are" Beshear will be the next Governor of Kentucky. Bevin conceded the gubernatorial race on November 14, 2019.

Governor of Kentucky

Bevin in 2016 speaking in Nashua, New Hampshire

After a series of terror attacks in Paris – for which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility – Bevin announced that, following his inauguration, he would join 25 other U.S. governors in refusing any Syrian refugees seeking to relocate to their respective states "until we can better determine the full extent of any risks to our citizens." In response, Lexington Herald-Leader political cartoonist Joel Pett published a cartoon depicting Bevin hiding under his desk, his floor strewn with newspapers featuring stories about the Paris attacks, with an aide telling him, "Sir, they're not terrorists.... they're your own adopted kids!", a reference to Bevin's four children adopted from Ethiopia. Bevin responded via Twitter: "The tone of racial intolerance being struck by the @HeraldLeader has no place in Kentucky and won't be tolerated by our administration."

Bevin was sworn into a four-year term as Governor of Kentucky on December 8, 2015. Observers from both parties praised Bevin's selection of experienced, relatively moderate individuals for his cabinet, including his former rival, Hal Heiner, as Secretary of the Education and Workforce Cabinet and former University of Kentucky football standout Derrick Ramsey as his Secretary of Labor. The appointments of two Democratic state representatives – John Tilley as Secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet and Tanya Pullin to a state judgeship – reduced the party's majority in the House and set up special elections that gave Republicans a chance to win their seats from Democrats. Bevin set the dates of the special elections to fill the seats of Tilley and Pullin, as well as those formerly held by newly elected Auditor Mike Harmon and newly elected Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, for March 8, 2016. Democratic representatives Denver Butler and Jim Gooch also switched their party affiliation to Republican in December, reducing the Democratic majority to 50–46 for the beginning of the first General Assembly of Bevin's governorship, and giving Republicans a chance to evenly split the chamber's 100 seats by sweeping the special elections. Republicans held only Harmon's seat, giving Democrats a 53–47 advantage in the House for the remainder of the session.

In a series of December 2015 executive orders, Bevin removed the names of county clerks from state marriage licenses, as well as reversed orders by Beshear that restored voting rights for non-violent felons who had completed their sentences and raised the minimum wage for some state workers to $10.10 per hour.

In December 2015, Bevin announced that the state would not renew an advertising contract for kynect. In January 2016, he notified federal authorities that he plans to dismantle kynect by the end of 2016 and charged Mark Birdwhistell, formerly Secretary of Health under Governor Fletcher, with designing a system to replace kynect. Although the Beshear administration suggested the shutdown would cost the state $23 million, Bevin, citing a Deloitte study, promised it would be in the "small single digits [of millions]".

Bevin declared both 2016 and 2017 the Year of the Bible in Kentucky.

In July 2018, after a federal judge rejected his plan to overhaul the program, Bevin cut Medicaid dental and vision coverage for up to 460,000 Kentuckians. The cuts were only supposed to affect able-bodied adults, but shortly after the cuts were implemented, the state Medicaid computer system showed that some children, disabled adults and pregnant women had lost coverage. Dentists said that they had to turn children away, including some with significant dental decay.

Attorney General Andy Beshear sued governor Bevin several times over what he argued was the governor's abuse of executive powers, during Beshear's tenure as attorney general and while he was campaigning against Bevin for governor. While he prevailed in a number of cases, Beshear also lost in a number of cases. Bevin said Beshear: "never sues on behalf of the people of Kentucky. He does it on behalf of his own political career ..."

Bevin's tenure as governor was contentious. As of May 2016, he had one of the lowest approval ratings among United States governors. His disapproval rating was 51% in late 2018. In January 2019, Morning Consult described Bevin as the "least popular governor up for re-election in 2019" and ranked him number six among the least popular governors in the nation. According to an April 2019 poll, Bevin was the least popular Governor in the United States, with a 52% disapproval rating versus a 33% approval rating. In July 2019, the National Journal placed Bevin second in its list of governor seats most likely to switch parties, and reported "his unpopularity coupled with party infighting make(s) him vulnerable in the deep-red state." In November 2019, Bevin was defeated by Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear.

Bevin issued many controversial pardons during his tenure. These included his sister and wife's friend who tried to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband and his new wife. ..... These pardons were met with outrage from some families of the victims, and were scrutinized by some state legislators. On December 13, 2019, President of the Kentucky Senate Robert Stivers–speaking for the Republican majority–condemned the pardons, called on the U.S. Attorneys Office to investigate them for potential violations of the Hobbs Act, and asked Attorney General-elect Daniel Cameron to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Bevin's actions.

2016 legislative session

Bevin with Governors Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota in Berlin, Germany, in March 2017

Budget issues

On January 26, 2016, Bevin delivered a budget address to the General Assembly detailing his two-year budget proposal. The proposal cut the allocation for most state agencies by 9 percent over the upcoming biennium, with most of the savings being redirected into the state pension system, which was among the worst funded in the nation. Public elementary and secondary education were spared from the cuts, as were social workers, public defenders, corrections officers, and Kentucky State Police employees, all of whom received raises under Bevin's proposal. Public colleges and universities were not exempt from the cuts, and Bevin called for a gradual move to performance-based funding for higher education, with all higher education funding tied to performance by 2020.

By executive order, Bevin required all state agencies to reduce spending in their current budgets by 4.5 percent. House Speaker Greg Stumbo argued that Bevin did not have the authority to order such reductions without legislative approval, but Senate President Robert Stivers defended Bevin's action, saying it amounted to simply not spending money that was previously allocated. Bevin later compromised with the state's public college and university presidents to reduce the cuts to 2 percent, but Attorney General Andy Beshear sued to stop the cuts entirely. In May 2016, a Franklin Circuit Court judge ruled Bevin did have the authority to make the cuts. In September 2016, the Kentucky Supreme Court issued a 5–2 decision reversing the Franklin Circuit Court's ruling and agreeing with Beshear that Bevin lacked the authority to make mid-year budget cuts without the approval of the General Assembly.

On March 7, 2016, Bevin released a video on social media claiming that House Democrats were not following through on their obligations to help craft the state budget. Legislators responded with a photo and statements that while Bevin was producing his film designed to chastise them, House leaders were in fact in committee meetings working out details of a budget proposal while Speaker Stumbo suggested the Governor was either unfamiliar with the legislative process, or intended to deceive people. On March 12, House Democrats released their own budget, which sustained most of the cuts to executive agencies in Bevin's budget, but exempted public universities from any cuts. The Republican-controlled Senate countered with a proposal that hewed closely to Bevin's original budget.

The two chambers announced that their negotiations had reached an impasse just days before the constitutionally mandated end of the session on April 15, but Bevin insisted he would not call a special session for them to continue negotiations. Just before 3:00 a.m. on April 14, negotiators announced they had reached a compromise that would cut public universities' budgets by 4.5 percent over the biennium instead of the 9 percent requested by Bevin and implement a performance-based funding model in 2017. The money would be reallocated to contribute over $1 billion toward the state pension system's liabilities, which exceeded $30 billion. ..... Bevin signed the budget, but used his line-item veto to strip funding for the scholarship program in the first year of the biennium, saying the guidelines were poorly written and should be revised before implementing the program in 2017. Because of the constitutional prohibition against the legislative session extending past April 15, the General Assembly was unable to override the veto.

2016 Values Voter Summit

Bevin with Vice President Mike Pence in March 2017

At the September 2016 Family Research Council Action Values Voter Summit (VVS) in Washington, DC, where Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates Donald Trump and Mike Pence also spoke, Bevin "both lamented and called for revolution and bloodshed to 'redeem' what [would] be lost" if Hillary Clinton were to be victorious in the 2016 presidential election, according to one source. He used and echoed language about "the tree of liberty" being refreshed by the blood of patriots and addressed his own family in the same regard – "I have nine children ... it might be their blood [that] is needed." Bevin urged the audience to emulate Winston Churchill rather than Neville Chamberlain, saying, "It's a slippery slope.... ..... Another account of the VVS appearance said he had spoken without notes or teleprompter. Later, Bevin asserted that his violent metaphors referred to military sacrifice.

2017 legislative session

Bevin speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference

In the 2016 election, the Republican Party took a supermajority in the Kentucky House of Representatives; the party had not controlled the chamber since 1921. State House Speaker Greg Stumbo, viewed as one of Bevin's main political antagonists, was one of several House Democrats defeated in the election; Bevin remarked, "'good riddance'...he will not be missed one bit. Kentucky will be better for his absence." The 2016 election victories allowed Bevin to pursue his conservative agenda in the ensuing session, as the House Democrats had blocked conservative legislation prior to this.

In an unusual Saturday session in January 2017, the Kentucky General Assembly passed seven fast-tracked bills on key Republican legislative priorities. ..... Bevin signed all seven bills into law on January 9. .....

On March 16, 2017, Bevin signed SB 17 into law, intended to "protect religious expression in public schools" by barring school districts from regulating student organizations in ways such as requiring them to accept LGBT people as members. ..... On March 27, 2017, Bevin vetoed a bill that would have allowed a judge to order mentally disabled people to undergo outpatient treatment if they could not recognize their condition and if they had a history of hospitalization, due to his concerns over its effects of individual liberty. The Kentucky legislature overrode his veto on the bill and three others.

In April 2017, Bevin signed HB 128 into law, which ordered the Kentucky Board of Education to develop rules for Bible literacy classes. Bevin signed another bill authorizing Bible classes in June 2017.

In July 2017, Bevin had the Kentucky Capitol building cleaned, choosing to use private funds as payment. During his 2018 Kentucky State of the Commonwealth Address, Bevin said it was the first time the building had been cleaned, echoing a belief expressed in July by an administration cabinet spokesperson.

2018 legislative session

In February 2018, following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and the Marshall County High School shooting in Kentucky, Bevin declared that it was time to discuss what "should not be allowed in the United States as it relates to the things being put in the hands of our young people". ..... They have desensitized people to the value of human life, to the dignity of women, to the dignity of human decency." On November 13, 2018, Bevin said that a cultural popularity of death, as evidenced by zombie television shows, is to blame for mass shootings, and that gun regulation is not the solution.

In March 2018, Bevin sparked controversy among local teachers' associations when he criticized their protesting of a pension reform bill as "selfish and shortsighted". ..... The president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association responded that by Bevin's logic, schools should never have any breaks or vacations. The Republican-controlled Kentucky House condemned Bevin's comments and overrode his veto of a law that increased classroom spending. Days after his controversial comments in April, Bevin said he did not intend to hurt people and apologized for those who have been hurt by the things that were said.

2019 legislative session

On January 29, 2019, Bevin stated that school closings for January 30 were a "sign America was soft". He received criticism, including from NBC weather forecaster Al Roker, who referred to Bevin as a "nitwit governor". Bevin defended his comments and attacked the Lexington Herald-Leader and Courier Journal, and WKYT as "clowns", referring to a comment by Barack Obama in 2009 about Washington D.C. coming to a halt after a dusting of snow when Chicago would not have canceled school.

On March 11, 2019, Bevin signed a bill into law removing the permit requirement to carry a concealed firearm in the state, becoming the 16th state to enact such legislation after South Dakota and Oklahoma had done it earlier in the year. ..... On March 26, 2019, Bevin signed a bill that required public universities to protect free speech rights by banning them from disinviting speakers. On April 25, 2019, Bevin blamed teacher strikes for the death of a seven-year-old. During the 2019 Kentucky Derby, Bevin was booed while making a speech during the trophy presentation, following the disqualification of the original race winner, Maximum Security.

On July 12, 2019, Bevin announced his support for a proposed bill to ban sanctuary cities in Kentucky.

Personal life

While stationed at Fort Polk, Bevin went on a blind date with his future wife, Glenna. At the time, Glenna was a divorced single mother of a 5-year-old daughter from her first marriage to an abusive husband. The two married in 1996 and had five additional children. After Glenna's remarriage, her daughter, Brittiney, took her adoptive father's last name. In 2003, 17-year-old Brittiney was killed in a car accident near the family's home. In memory of their daughter, the Bevins created Brittiney's Wish, a non-profit organization that funds domestic and international mission trips for high school students, and started an endowment that allowed Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to open its Bevin Center for Missions Mobilization in 2012.

In 2011, Bevin took his children out of school for a year for a 26,000-mile (42,000 km) tour of the United States, visiting sites of educational or historical interest, including the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and the Topeka, Kansas, schoolhouse at the center of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. After their application to adopt a daughter from Kentucky's foster care system was denied because they already had five children, the Bevins adopted four children – between the ages of 2 and 10 – from Ethiopia in June 2012. By 2015, Bevin said all of his children were homeschooled. To avoid disruptions in the children's schooling, the Bevins opted not to move into the Kentucky Governor's Mansion immediately after Bevin's election as governor in November 2015, instead waiting until after the school year ended in August 2016. The eleven-member Bevin family is the largest to inhabit the mansion since it was constructed in 1914. The family also retains their pre-election home in Louisville.

The Bevins attended Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. After his election as governor, he announced he would hold an invitation-only inaugural worship service at Frankfort's Buck Run Baptist Church, but the service was moved to the Frankfort Convention Center and the invitation requirement was dropped following an "overwhelming response from the public".

In March 2019, Bevin said in an interview that he deliberately exposed all nine of his children to chickenpox so they would "catch the disease and become immune."

In May 2023, Glenna Bevin filed for divorce. The divorce petition stated the marriage was "irretrievably broken" and that the couple had been separated for more than a year.

Electoral history

See also

In Spanish: Matt Bevin para niños