page_title: Steve Beshear
section_title: Political interim and 1996 Senate bid
hierarchical_section_title: Steve Beshear / Political interim and 1996 Senate bid
caption_attribution_description: English: Official photo of United States Senator and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
context_page_description: Steven Lynn Beshear is an American attorney and politician who served as the 61st governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1974 to 1980, was the state's 44th attorney general from 1980 to 1983, and was the 49th lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1987.
  After graduating from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 1968, Beshear briefly practiced law in New York before returning to Kentucky and being elected to the state legislature, where he gained a reputation as a consumer advocate. He parlayed that reputation into a term as attorney general, serving under Governor John Y. Brown Jr. As attorney general, Beshear issued an opinion that copies of the Ten Commandments must be removed from the walls of the state's classrooms in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Stone v. Graham. He also clashed with first lady Phyllis George Brown when he opposed the practice of charging an admission fee for visitors to view the renovated governor's mansion. In 1983, Beshear was elected lieutenant governor in the administration of Governor Martha Layne Collins.
context_section_description: After his defeat in the 1987 election, Beshear moved to a 35-acre (140,000 m²) farm in Clark County. He resumed his career as a lawyer, joining the 125-member Lexington law firm of Stites and Harbison. He handled several high-profile cases such as the bankruptcy of Calumet Farm and the liquidation of the Kentucky Central Insurance Company. He underwent successful surgery to treat prostate cancer in 1994.
  Beshear did little in the political arena for almost a decade after his 1987 primary defeat, but in late 1995, he was encouraged by Democratic leaders – including former governor Ned Breathitt, Senator Wendell H. Ford, and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Bob Kerrey – to challenge incumbent Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. Beshear entered the primary as a heavy favorite against Tom Barlow, a former one-term Congressman from Kentucky's First District, and Shelby Lanier, a retired Louisville police officer. During the primary campaign, Beshear virtually ignored Barlow and Lanier and focused his rhetoric on McConnell. Despite Barlow's tour of all 120 Kentucky counties, Beshear cruised to victory in the primary, garnering 177,859 votes (66.38%) to Barlow's 64,235 (23.97%) and Lanier's 25,856 (9.65%).
  Beshear faced heavy deficits in polls against McConnell throughout the general election campaign. McConnell also raised twice as much money as Beshear during the campaign. Beshear tried to make McConnell's fundraising a campaign issue, claiming much of the money came from political action committees that represented interests that lobbied the Senate committees on which McConnell served. McConnell defended his contributors, saying that the right to free speech included the right to donate money. Beshear charged that Republicans, including McConnell, had voted to cut Medicare; McConnell responded that Republicans had not cut Medicare, but had put forward a plan to curb its growth, a plan that didn't differ significantly, McConnell said, from the one proposed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
  The campaign turned personal during the second of two debates between the two candidates when McConnell charged that the Iroquois Hunt Club, to which Beshear belonged, had no African-American members and was racially discriminatory. Beshear denied that the club was discriminatory and fired back that a prominent McConnell supporter from Louisville was "virulently anti-women." McConnell countered that Beshear had taken money from a labor union group that was under investigation for links to organized crime. After the debate, it was revealed that the Pendennis Club, of which McConnell had been a member, was under investigation for discriminatory membership practices; McConnell claimed he had resigned his membership in the club after perceiving that it practiced discrimination, but did not express his reasons for resigning to the club's membership or leadership. Ultimately, none of Beshear's arguments gained much traction, and he lost the race by a 724,794 votes (55.5%) to 560,012 (42.9%). At the time, it was the largest victory margin of McConnell's career. In a 2009 biography of McConnell, author John David Dyche wrote that Beshear "had no illusions about his chance of success [in the race against McConnell], but for the sake of his party, and hoping to ride the coattails of President Clinton's likely re-election, he got in the race." After the book's release, Beshear said through a spokesman that Dyche's assessment "sounds accurate."
  Beshear continued his legal practice at Stites and Harbison following his defeat by McConnell. In 2001, the firm was hired to represent creditors in a bankruptcy case against Wallace Wilkinson, Beshear's opponent in the 1987 gubernatorial primary. The firm also represented four creditors of Wallace's Bookstore, the company through which Wilkinson had made his fortune. Wilkinson unsuccessfully sought to have the firm removed from the case, citing a potential conflict of interest stemming from his old political rivalry with Beshear. The case was eventually settled in 2002, four months after Wilki
caption: Mitch McConnell turned back Beshear's challenge for his Senate seat in 1996
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