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.

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.

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 career

Bevin speaking in an AARP voter guide video, September 2015

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, McConnell 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.

Governor of Kentucky

Bevin in 2016 speaking in Nashua, New Hampshire

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

Bevin with Vice President Mike Pence in March 2017

Bevin speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference

Bevin was sworn into a four-year term as Governor of Kentucky on December 8, 2015.

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.

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

In July 2018, 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's tenure as governor was contentious. As of May 2016, he had one of the lowest approval ratings among United States governors. In November 2019, Bevin was defeated by Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear.

Personal life

Bevin met his future wife, Glenna, while stationed at Fort Polk. At the time, Glenna was a divorced single mother of a 5-year-old daughter from her first marriage. 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.

In May 2023, Glenna Bevin filed for divorce.

Electoral history

See also

In Spanish: Matt Bevin para niños