page_title: Matt Bevin
section_title: Governor of Kentucky
hierarchical_section_title: Matt Bevin / Governor of Kentucky
caption_attribution_description: Governor Matt Bevin speaking with attendees at the 2016 First in the Nation Town Hall hosted by the New Hampshire Republican Party in Nashua, New Hampshire. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
context_page_description: Matthew Griswold Bevin is an American businessman and politician who served as the 62nd Governor of Kentucky, from 2015 to 2019. He was the third Republican elected Kentucky governor since World War II, after Ernie Fletcher and Louie Nunn.
  Born in Denver, Colorado, and raised in Shelburne, New Hampshire, Bevin earned a bachelor's degree at Washington and Lee University in 1989, then served four years of active duty in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of captain. He became wealthy in the investment business and moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1999. He was president of 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, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in the 2014 Republican primary. Although Bevin gained 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 him by almost 25 percentage points.
context_section_description: 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 Kentucky Governor 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.
  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 State
caption: Bevin in 2016
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