Matt Bevin turns hopes to GOP governor's race

Thu, 05/07/2015 - 2:09pm — John Embry

Matt Bevin, Republican Candidate for Kentucky Governor

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. – Matt Bevin, pounded by Sen. Mitch McConnell a year ago in a U.S. Senate primary, has turned his attention from a quixotic quest to topple one of the nation's most powerful Republicans to the race for Kentucky's governor.

"I'm running a race based on issues, I'm running a race based on why I believe I'm the best choice for people in the state of Kentucky as governor," he said in an interview.

With heavy spending on television and radio ads, political watchers say he has placed himself in contention for the Republican nomination, and he may benefit as two opponents in the race, Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and former Louisville Metro Council member Hal Heiner, engage in a verbal feud.

Meanwhile, affable former state Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott also hopes that voters will turn away from the ugly battle that has occasionally drawn Bevin in and choose him as the GOP nominee.

With fewer than 20 percent of Kentucky Republicans expected to head to the polls May 19, winning will likely hinge on who can get their voters to the polls. And Bevin, who gained tea party backing in his race against McConnell, appears to have a base of support among that group.

He moved to solidify it in January when he chose Jenean Hampton, the former president of the Southern Kentucky Tea Party, as his running mate. He rarely mentions her without mentioning she is African-American.

Bobby Alexander, a former tea party leader in Elizabethtown, backed Bevin last year and he's supporting him again.

"The establishment is doing a miserable job," Alexander said in an interview. "They get elected and suddenly they forget their commitments and we keep electing them. Matt's not part of that environment and not part of that system.

"... He's a Christian man, he does what he says he's going to do," Alexander said. "If we have a realistic chance to change things, we have to go outside of the mainstream."

Bevin is running an ad saying "insiders have been in control too long." Alexander said it's a concern whether someone running on that sort or platform can succeed in Frankfort, but he believes Bevin can.

"I think Matt can work with both parties," he said. "Matt is one of the most successful people I've known and he knows how to get things done."

Despite the ad that says that insiders have been in control too long, Bevin argued with a reporter who suggested he was running as an outsider.

"You've never seen me put a single thing out there that says that," he said. "You don't hear me running on that, I'm not advertising it."

He appears more of a schooled politician now than he did in 2014, when he attended a rally in favor of cockfighting and then defended the blood sport, claiming some of the founding fathers took part in it.

But early in this campaign, Bevin changed his position and said in February that he favored making cockfighting a felony in Kentucky.

When Bevin speaks of himself, he paints the picture of a self-made man who grew up poor in New Hampshire in an old farm house where he and his five siblings were required to tend to the family's small menagerie of farm animals.

His father worked a variety of jobs, teaching, working in local factories and even doing janitorial work, dragging young Matt with him to clean offices in the evenings, Bevin has said.

While the family may have struggled, it was far from destitute. He and his brothers attended Gould Academy, in Bethel, Maine, a boarding school with tuition of $3,600 per year when he graduated in 1985, he said.

Bevin said he was able to attend through financial aid and working in the school's cafeteria. Whatever cost remained, he paid for by working summer jobs.

From there, it was off to Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., on an ROTC scholarship, where he majored in East Asian Studies and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. In the Army, he was an artillery officer, rising to the rank of captain by the time he left the Individual Ready Reserve program in 2003.

Bevin went into business working for investment companies, and National Asset Management brought him to Louisville in 1999. Since, he has been involved in creating several companies, ranging from investments to health care to signage.

He says he has created "dozens of jobs" but has never given a specific number of people he has on the payroll.

Bevin said he is now owner or part owner (which he defines as having at least a 15 percent stake in the company) of 10 businesses. His stake in those companies is valued from $7 million to $35 million, according to filings with the Senate Ethics Committee he made in connection with his 2014 campaign.

At that time, he listed personal and business checking and money market accounts as containing $1.75 million to $6.5 million.

The personal financial disclosure form he filed with the U.S. Senate when he was running in the 2014 primary showed that Bevin's net worth was somewhere between $13.4 million and $54.9 million.

Bevin and his wife, Glenna, married in 1996 and have nine children between the ages of 5 and 16. They live in a home valued at $703,860 and drive a 12-passenger van that she nicknamed Apollo 12.

After his oldest daughter, Brittany, died in a car accident on Lexington Road, in front of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the couple endowed the Bevin Center for Missions Mobilization at the school.

Al Mohler, president of the school, said Bevin is a man "of the deepest character and conviction."

"The first thing I came to know about Matt was his heart for his family," said Mohler, who is not endorsing anyone in the race and considers Heiner a close friend who he encouraged to get into the race.

Mohler said that funding the missions center was Bevin's first involvement with the seminary but that "the life of the seminary with the Bevins has become intertwined in many different ways" since.

On issues, Bevin is running ads staking out a conservative position in a number of areas.

He is calling for a repeal of the kynect health insurance exchange, saying that people who need health insurance can simply go through the federal exchange.

Bevin also favors the repeal of the state's endorsement of the Common Core academic standards. The standards were created by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to define learning benchmarks as students advance in school.

Bevin is calling for passage of legislation allowing people to work in union businesses without paying union dues or representation fees. He said businesses use that as a litmus test before deciding where to locate.

He said he will push for tax reform that will reduce individual and corporate tax rates, eliminate the state's inheritance tax, which only applies to a small percentage of estates, and to reduce the total tax burden.

Additionally, Bevin said he will cut the governor's office administrative staff by 20 percent.

He said he decided to run for governor because the other candidates weren't talking issues.

"There wasn't a single person in this race that had come out with a plan, not one of 'em," he said.

Bevin's biggest problem may be convincing McConnell backers to support him after Bevin refused to endorse McConnell by name following the U.S. Senate primary. Instead, Bevin simply said he was backing Republican candidates.

Former Jefferson County GOP Chairman Bill Stone said many Republicans haven't forgiven him for not endorsing McConnell.

Josh Holmes, McConnell's former chief of staff and an adviser to his campaign, was even more critical, saying that Bevin can't be trusted and is essentially running to satisfy his ego.

"If Matt Bevin had moved to a state where he had a better shot at being elected to office as a Democrat, he would articulate the values of liberalism with the same conviction he now talks about conservatism," Holmes said in a statement.

"It's abundantly clear that his guiding light is to embrace whatever gets himself a little further down the road," he said. "If somehow Matt Bevin got into the governor's mansion his only agenda would be the commissioning of his portrait."

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.

Candidate profiles

This week, the Courier-Journal is profiling each Republican candidate for governor. The profiles are planned as follows:

•Thursday: Matt Bevin

•Friday: James Comer

•Saturday: Hal Heiner

•Monday: Will T. Scott

Matthew Griswold Bevin

Age: 48

Family: Wife, Glenna, and nine children

Religion: Baptist

Party: Republican