91 Facts About Steve Beshear

Steven Lynn Beshear was born on September 21,1944 and is an American attorney and politician who served as the 61st governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015.

Steve Beshear 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.

Steve Beshear parlayed that reputation into a term as attorney general, serving under Governor John Y Brown Jr.

Steve Beshear 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, Steve Beshear was elected lieutenant governor in the administration of Governor Martha Layne Collins.

Steve Beshear's initial rise to political prominence was interrupted in 1987 when he finished third in a five-candidate Democratic gubernatorial primary election.

The Steve Beshear campaign's sparring with that of former Governor Brown, the second-place finisher in the primary, opened the door for political novice Wallace Wilkinson's well-financed campaign to achieve a come-from-behind upset in the race.

Steve Beshear's only foray into politics during this period was an unsuccessful challenge to Senator Mitch McConnell in 1996.

In 2007, Steve Beshear was drawn back into politics by the vulnerability of incumbent Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher, whose administration was under extended investigation by then-Attorney General Greg Stumbo, over violations of the state's merit system.

Steve Beshear was ineligible for reelection in 2015 due to term limits imposed by the Kentucky Constitution, and was succeeded by Republican Matt Bevin.

Steve Beshear was born on September 21,1944, in Hopkins County, Kentucky.

Steve Beshear is the third of five children born to Orlando Russell and Mary Elizabeth Beshear.

Steve Beshear's father, grandfather, and uncle were Primitive Baptist lay ministers, and in his childhood years, Beshear attended both his father's church and the Christian Church where his mother was a member.

Steve Beshear accompanied his uncle, Fred Steve Beshear, as he traveled around the county during several races for a seat in the state House of Representatives.

Steve Beshear graduated as valedictorian in a class of 28 at Dawson Springs High School in 1962.

Steve Beshear then attended the University of Kentucky, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 1966.

Steve Beshear was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity and the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Steve Beshear was elected student body treasurer and from 1964 to 1965 served as student body president.

In 1968, Steve Beshear graduated with honors from the University of Kentucky College of Law.

Steve Beshear served as an intelligence specialist in the United States Army Reserve, performing some of the duties of a Judge Advocate General.

Steve Beshear led the firm until his election as attorney general in 1979.

In 1973, Steve Beshear began his political career by being elected to represent the 76th District in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

Steve Beshear was re-elected in 1975 and 1977; both campaigns featured close Democratic primaries between Beshear and Jerry Lundergan.

In 1974, Steve Beshear voted against a resolution condemning the practice of desegregation busing because it called for changes to the federal constitution.

Steve Beshear was the first candidate to announce his bid for the post of Attorney General of Kentucky in the 1979 election.

The central issue of Steve Beshear's campaign was his pledge to be an advocate of the consumer in cases of proposed utility rate hikes.

When incumbent Attorney General Stephens resigned in December 1979 to accept an appointment to the Kentucky Supreme Court, Steve Beshear was appointed to fill the vacancy until his term officially began in January.

Steve Beshear then issued an advisory opinion that displaying the Commandments in classrooms under any circumstances was banned by the Court's ruling.

Steve Beshear asked Beshear to protest the charge, and Beshear requested an injunction against the Save the Mansion Fund.

Limited to one term as attorney general by the state constitution, Steve Beshear declared his candidacy for lieutenant governor in 1983.

Stuart categorized Steve Beshear as being too liberal for Kentucky, citing his opinion in the Ten Commandments case, as well as his support for abortion rights and gun control.

Steve Beshear denied advocating for gun control and charged that Stuart, a state senator from Jefferson County, had not shown any leadership worthy of election to the lieutenant governor's office.

Steve Beshear easily defeated Stuart by a vote of 568,869 to 321,352; Wiggins captured just 7,728 votes.

Steve Beshear had clashed with the company over similar issues during his term as attorney general.

Steve Beshear attempted to block Beshear's participation in the investigation, but the Kentucky Public Service Commission rejected the attempt.

In 1987, Steve Beshear entered a crowded Democratic gubernatorial primary that included former governor Julian Carroll, millionaire bookstore magnate Wallace Wilkinson, and Eastern Kentucky physician Grady Stumbo.

Steve Beshear spent much of the campaign running ads that blasted Brown for his jet-setting lifestyle, including, the ads claimed, his "wild nights in Vegas".

Brown countered with ads claiming that Steve Beshear was distorting the facts and could not be trusted.

Steve Beshear resumed his career as a lawyer, joining the 125-member Lexington law firm of Stites and Harbison.

Steve Beshear handled several high-profile cases such as the bankruptcy of Calumet Farm and the liquidation of the Kentucky Central Insurance Company.

Steve Beshear underwent successful surgery to treat prostate cancer in 1994.

Steve 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.

Steve Beshear faced heavy deficits in polls against McConnell throughout the general election campaign.

Steve 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.

Steve 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 Steve Beshear belonged, had no African-American members and was racially discriminatory.

Ultimately, none of Steve Beshear's arguments gained much traction, and he lost the race by a 724,794 votes to 560,012.

Steve Beshear continued his legal practice at Stites and Harbison following his defeat by McConnell.

On December 18,2006, Steve Beshear announced that he would enter the 2007 gubernatorial race with Hazard physician and state senator Daniel Mongiardo as his running mate.

Steve Beshear promised to return "integrity" to the governor's office, a slap at sitting governor Ernie Fletcher, who was seeking re-election despite a recently concluded investigation into his administration's hiring practices conducted by Democratic Attorney General Greg Stumbo.

Early in the campaign, Steve Beshear attempted to set himself apart from the other candidates by supporting a constitutional amendment that would allow expanded casino gambling in the state, which he claimed could generate $500 million in new revenue without the need to raise taxes.

Steve Beshear later admitted that comment was aimed at Lunsford, who dropped out of the 2003 Democratic gubernatorial primary and in the general election endorsed Fletcher over Democratic candidate Ben Chandler, and at Henry, who faced allegations of illegal medical billing and improper campaign financing.

Incumbent governor Fletcher emerged from the Republican primary, and Steve Beshear immediately looked to make the investigation against Fletcher the primary issue of the campaign.

Ultimately, Steve Beshear was elected by a vote of 619,567 to 435,856.

On July 19,2009, Steve Beshear announced that Louisville mayor Jerry Abramson would replace Mongiardo as his running mate in his re-election campaign.

Steve Beshear faced no opposition in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, held on May 17,2011.

Steve Beshear countered that the legislature had already authorized $138 million in expenditures from the surplus fund and that his reckoning of the deficit included $300 million in "additional spending needs".

Steve Beshear was dealt the first political setback of his term in the special election to fill the state Senate seat of his lieutenant governor, Daniel Mongiardo.

Steve Beshear expressed surprise that the budget issues consumed so much of the Assembly's time during the session, but admitted that the legislature had become much more independent of the governor than it was when he was a legislator two decades earlier.

Steve Beshear listed early childhood education and expanded health care for children among the priorities that he was unable to address in the session.

On February 15,2008, Steve Beshear unveiled his promised legislation that would allow casino gambling in Kentucky.

Steve Beshear announced that his proposal for a constitutional amendment to allow for casinos was dead for the regular session on March 27,2008.

On July 31,2008, a Lexington judge sided with Steve Beshear, invalidating the law and declaring that the General Assembly would no longer be allowed to use the practice of stopping the clocks; he did not rule on the validity of the other bills passed after the session expired.

Dissatisfied that the General Assembly had not acted to shore up the state pension system, Steve Beshear called a special legislative session for July 23,2008, after House and Senate leaders informed him that they had reached an agreement on a plan after the regular legislative session's end.

Later in the year, Steve Beshear released what he called the state's first-ever comprehensive energy plan.

Steve Beshear clashed with the state Council on Postsecondary Education over its hiring of Brad Cowgill as its president.

Steve Beshear said state law required that the Council conduct a national search for its president and that they hire someone with experience and an established reputation in higher education; he claimed that Cowgill, a Lexington lawyer and state budget director for former Governor Fletcher, was not qualified for the position and that the council hired him without a national search.

Steve Beshear, who had considered asking all of the council members to resign or abolishing the council altogether in favor of a new one, praised Cowgill's decision.

In September 2008, Steve Beshear's administration attempted to seize control of 141 gambling-related domain names in an attempt to block Kentucky residents from accessing those websites.

Steve Beshear claimed the sites were conducting illegal, unregulated gambling operations in the state and providing untaxed competition to the state's horse racing industry.

Later that year, a Franklin County judge ruled that Steve Beshear had the authority to seize the domain names, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals overturned that ruling on appeal.

Steve Beshear appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court, partially on grounds that the web site owners were being represented by gambling associations and players groups who Steve Beshear said had no legal standing in the case.

In 2010, the Kentucky Supreme Court agreed with Steve Beshear and ordered the web site owners themselves to appear before the court.

Some speculated that Steve Beshear had personally interfered on behalf of Stumbo, a charge he denied.

Steve Beshear hoped that the House would suspend the rules, as they had in previous years, in order to consider bills to increase funding to public defenders, create a transportation authority to oversee bridge-building projects in Louisville and Henderson, and provide various economic incentives, including a package intended to lure a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race to Kentucky Speedway.

Two days later, Steve Beshear announced the reversal of the state police's new policy, saying he was not informed of it and believed it was the wrong thing to do.

Steve Beshear promised the foreign language versions of the test would be updated and would continue to be offered.

Steve Beshear called another special legislative session in June 2009 to address another $1 billion shortfall in the state budget.

Later, Steve Beshear amended the call to include the economic incentives package that was not approved during the regular session and, in light of Attorney General Conway's opinion on video lottery terminals, a measure to expand gambling in the state by statute.

Again unable to get his expanded gambling proposal past the Senate, Steve Beshear attempted to chip away at the Republican majority in that chamber by appointing some Republican senators to lucrative positions in the executive and judicial branches in advance of the 2010 General Assembly.

Shortly after the special session, Steve Beshear named Republican senator Charlie Borders to the state Public Safety Commission.

Early in the 2010 legislative session, Steve Beshear presented his biennial budget proposal to the General Assembly.

The state projected a $1.5 billion shortfall for the biennium, and Steve Beshear proposed to make up for the shortfall with revenue generated from expanded gambling.

Steve Beshear utilized his line-item veto on 19 items in the budget, claiming they restricted his ability to implement the reduction in executive expenses mandated by the budget.

In July 2010, Steve Beshear announced six mandatory, unpaid furlough days for most state employees in order to achieve the savings called for by the budget.

Later in the month, Steve Beshear announced exceptions from the furlough for public safety and mental health care workers.

Steve Beshear's plan involved moving $166 million from the second year of the biennial budget to cover the shortfall and cover the costs in the second year through savings achieved by switching to a managed care plan for Medicaid.

Immediately following the end of the legislative session, Steve Beshear called for a special legislative session to consider a way to meet the state's Medicaid obligations and whether or not to raise the minimum dropout age.

Steve Beshear then used his line-item veto to strike the spending cuts and the savings assessment provisions, per a previous arrangement with Democratic lawmakers.

Steve Beshear delivered the Democratic response to a speech to a joint session of the United States Congress given by President Donald Trump on February 28,2017.

Steve Beshear was chosen due to his successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act in Kentucky and to bring back the white, rural voters that Democrats felt they had lost in the 2016 presidential election.