19 Facts About Ken Bennett

Kenneth Roy Bennett was born on August 1,1959 and is an American politician.

Ken Bennett previously was a member of the state Senate from 1999 to 2007, and president of the state Senate from 2003 to 2007.

Ken Bennett was Secretary of State of Arizona from 2009 to 2015.

Ken Bennett unsuccessfully ran for governor of Arizona in the 2014 and 2018 elections.

Ken Bennett's parents moved to Prescott shortly thereafter, where he was raised and later graduated from Prescott High School.

Ken Bennett then transferred to Arizona State University in Tempe, graduating with Bachelor's in Accounting.

Ken Bennett began work for Ken Bennett Oil Company, a fuel distribution business in northern Arizona, in 1984.

Ken Bennett is an active member of Arizona Tea Party groups and regularly attends Tea Party events and meetings.

Ken Bennett was elected to the Prescott City Council in 1985 and served as Mayor Pro Tem in 1988.

Ken Bennett was appointed to the Arizona State Board of education in 1992, serving as president in 1996 and 1998.

When Jan Brewer ascended from Arizona Secretary of State to governor upon Janet Napolitano's resignation to become United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Bennett was selected as the new secretary of state, being sworn in on January 26,2009.

In 2012, as secretary of state, Ken Bennett denied being a "birther", but nonetheless made national news when he requested Obama's birth certificate from the state of Hawaii as a prerequisite to listing Obama on that year's presidential ballot.

Ken Bennett said he had made at the "request of numerous constituents"; after Hawaii provided the verification, Ken Bennett said he accepted that Obama was born in the United States.

Ken Bennett officially announced his intention to run for governor on November 12,2013.

In 2015, Ken Bennett announced his intention to run for Congress in Arizona's 1st Congressional district.

In 2021, the Arizona state senate controlled by Republicans provided $150,000 for funding an audit of the 2020 election presidential results in Maricopa County, with Ken Bennett becoming a liaison between the contractors performing the audit, the state, and the county.

In late July 2021, it was reported that Ken Bennett had been "banned from entering the building where the recount process is ongoing, after he shared some data with experts that showed the results match the officially certified numbers in Maricopa County".

Ken Bennett served as a chairman for the Look Ahead Group that advocates for January 6th "political prisoners," with Matt Braynard who briefly worked on the data team for former president Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, and Julie Fisher, who worked on Trump's campaign in 2020.

Ken Bennett met his wife Jeanne at ASU, and the two were married in 1982.