Martha Layne Collins
Martha Layne Collins is an American former businesswoman and politician from the U. S. state of Kentucky. Prior to that, she served as the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, under John Y. Brown, Jr, her election made her the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the U. S, she was considered as a possible running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election, but Mondale chose Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro instead. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Collins worked as a school teacher while her husband finished a degree in dentistry, she became interested in politics, worked on both Wendell Ford's gubernatorial campaign in 1971 and Walter "Dee" Huddleston's U. S. Senate campaign in 1972. In 1975, she was chosen secretary of the state's Democratic Party and was elected clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. During her tenure as clerk, a constitutional amendment restructured the state's judicial system, the Court of Appeals became the Kentucky Supreme Court.
Collins continued as clerk of the renamed court and worked to educate citizens about the court's new role. Collins was elected lieutenant governor in 1979, under Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. Brown was out of the state, leaving Collins as acting governor for more than 500 days of her four-year term. In 1983, she defeated Republican Jim Bunning to become Kentucky's first woman governor, her administration had two primary focuses: economic development. After failing to secure increased funding for education in the 1984 legislative session, she conducted a statewide public awareness campaign in advance of a special legislative session the following year, she used economic incentives to bring a Toyota manufacturing plant to Georgetown, Kentucky in 1986. Legal challenges to the incentives – which would have cost the state the plant and its related economic benefits – were dismissed by the Kentucky Supreme Court; the state experienced record economic growth under Collins' leadership. At the time, Kentucky governors were not eligible for reelection.
Collins taught at several universities after her four-year term as governor. From 1990 to 1996, she was the president of Saint Catharine College near Kentucky; the 1993 conviction of Collins' husband, Dr. Bill Collins, in an influence-peddling scandal, damaged her hopes for a return to political life. Prior to her husband's conviction it had been rumored that she would be a candidate for the U. S. Senate, or would take a position in the administration of President Bill Clinton. From 1998 to 2012, Collins served as an executive scholar-in-residence at Georgetown College. Martha Layne Hall was born December 7, 1936, in Bagdad, the only child of Everett and Mary Hall; when Martha was in the sixth grade, her family moved to Shelbyville and opened the Hall-Taylor Funeral Home. Martha was involved in numerous extracurricular activities both in school and at the local Baptist church, her parents were active in local politics, working for the campaigns of several Democratic candidates, Hall joined them, stuffing envelopes and delivering pamphlets door-to-door.
Martha attended Shelbyville High School where she was a cheerleader. She competed in beauty pageants and won the title of Shelby County Tobacco Festival Queen in 1954. After high school, Hall enrolled at Lindenwood College an all-woman college in Saint Charles, Missouri. After one year at Lindenwood, she transferred to the University of Kentucky in Kentucky, she was active in many clubs, including the Chi Omega social sorority, the Baptist Student Union, the home economics club, was the president of her dormitory and vice president of the house presidents council. In 1957, Hall met Billy Louis Collins while attending a Baptist camp in Shelby County, he was a student at Georgetown College in Georgetown, about 13 miles from Lexington. Hall earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics in 1959. Having won the title of Kentucky Derby Festival Queen earlier that year, she considered a career in modeling. Instead and Collins married shortly after her graduation. While Billy Collins pursued a degree in dentistry at the University of Louisville, Martha taught at Seneca and Fairdale high schools, both located in Louisville.
While living in Louisville, the couple had two children and Marla. In 1966, the Collinses moved to Versailles, where Martha taught at Woodford County Junior High School; the couple became active in several civic organizations, including the Jaycees and Jayceettes and the Young Democratic Couples Club. Through the club, they worked on behalf of Henry Ward's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 1967. By 1971, Collins was the president of the Jayceettes. Huddleston asked Collins to co-chair Wendell Ford's gubernatorial campaign in the 6th District. J. R. Miller, then-chairman of the state Democratic Party, commented that "She organized that district like you wouldn't believe." After Ford's victory, he named Collins as a Democratic National Committeewoman from Kentucky. She quit her teaching job and went to work full-time at the state Democratic Party headquarters, as secretary of the state Democratic party and as a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention; the following year, she worked for Huddleston's campaign for the U.
S. Senate. In 1975, Collins won the Democratic nominati
Kentucky Senate
The Kentucky Senate is the upper house of the Kentucky General Assembly. The Kentucky Senate is composed of 38 members elected from single-member districts throughout the Commonwealth. There are no term limits for Kentucky Senators; the Kentucky Senate meets at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort. According to Section 32 of the Kentucky Constitution, a state senator must: be at least 30 years old. Per section 30 of the Kentucky Constitution, senators are elected to four year staggered terms, with half the Senate elected every two years. Prior to a 1992 constitutional amendment, the Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky presided over the Senate. President: Robert Stivers President pro tempore: David P. Givens Additionally, each political party elects a floor leader and caucus chairman. Current party leadership of the Kentucky Senate: Republican Party Leader: Damon Thayer Whip: Jimmy Higdon Caucus chair: Dan Seum Democratic Party Leader: Morgan McGarvey Whip: Dennis Parrett Caucus chair: Johnny Ray Turner As of 10 January 2019: Carolyn Conn Moore became the first woman to serve in the Kentucky Senate when in November 1949 she won a special election to replace her husband, J. Lee Moore, in the legislature after his death.
Gerald Neal became the first African-American to be elected to the Kentucky Senate in 1988. Gerald Neal became the first African-American to be elected to a leadership position in the Kentucky General Assembly in 2014; as of 16 July 2018. Kentucky General Assembly Kentucky House of Representatives Government of Kentucky American Legislative Exchange Council members Kentucky Legislature Senate Members official government website State Senate of Kentucky at Project Vote Smart Kentucky Senate at Ballotpedia
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had expanded slavery into U. S. territories. The party subscribed to classical liberalism and took ideological stands that were anti-slavery and pro-economic reform. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president in the history of the United States; the Party was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. After the 1912 election, many Roosevelt supporters left the Party, the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right; the liberal Republican element in the GOP was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 that continued during the Reagan Era in the 1980s. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party's core base shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic.
White voters identified with the Republican Party after the 1960s. Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party made opposition to abortion a key plank of its national party platform and grew its support among evangelicals. By 2000, the Republican Party was aligned with Christian conservatism; the Party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States and rural areas in the North. The 21st century Republican Party ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' liberal platform and progressive wing; the GOP supports lower taxes, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, gun rights and restrictions on labor unions. The GOP was committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest, but has grown more supportive of free trade since 1952. In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is conservative.
Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by abolitionists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the popular Know Nothing Party. The party grew out of opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states; the Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting of the general anti-Nebraska movement, at which the name Republican was suggested for a new anti-slavery party, was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin; the name was chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party. The first official party convention was held on July 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. At the 1856 Republican National Convention, the party adopted a national platform emphasizing opposition to the expansion of slavery into U. S. territories. While Republican candidate John C.
Frémont lost the 1856 United States presidential election to James Buchanan, he did win 11 of the 16 northern states. The Republican Party first came to power in the elections of 1860 when it won control of both houses of Congress and its candidate, former congressman Abraham Lincoln, was elected President. In the election of 1864, it united with War Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. Under Republican congressional leadership, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—which banned slavery in the United States—passed the Senate in 1864 and the House in 1865; the party's success created factionalism within the party in the 1870s. Those who felt that Reconstruction had been accomplished, was continued to promote the large-scale corruption tolerated by President Ulysses S. Grant, ran Horace Greeley for the presidency; the Stalwart faction defended Grant and the spoils system, whereas the Half-Breeds pushed for reform of the civil service. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed in 1883.
The Republican Party supported hard money, high tariffs to promote economic growth, high wages and high profits, generous pensions for Union veterans, the annexation of Hawaii. The Republicans had strong support from pietistic Protestants, but they resisted demands for Prohibition; as the Northern postwar economy boomed with heavy and light industry, mines, fast-growing cities, prosperous agriculture, the Republicans took credit and promoted policies to sustain the fast growth. The GOP was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System. However, by 1890 the Republicans had agreed to the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints from owners of small businesses and farmers; the high McKinley Tariff of 1890 hurt the party and the Democrats swept to a landslide in the off-year elections defeating McKinley himself. The Democrats elected Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892; the election of William McKinley in 1896 was marked by a resurgence of Republican dominance that lasted until 1932.
McKinley promised that high tariffs would end the severe hardship caused by the Pa
Ron Lewis
Ronald E. "Ron" Lewis is an American retired politician, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1994 to 2009, having represented the 2nd Congressional District of Kentucky. Lewis announced on January 2008, that he would not run for an eighth term. Lewis was born in McKell near South Shore in Greenup County in far northeastern Kentucky, he graduated in 1964 from McKell High School. He attended Morehead State University in Morehead in Rowan County from 1964 to 1967 and graduated from the University of Kentucky at Lexington in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. Lewis returned to Morehead in 1980 to earn a master's degree in professional education in 1981. At twenty-one, Lewis worked in the 1967 gubernatorial campaign of Louie B. Nunn of Glasgow. Nunn's victory got Lewis a state job for a time and encouragement to run in 1971 for the Kentucky House of Representatives in his native Greenup County. Though he lost the legislative race in a Democratic year in Kentucky, Lewis maintained an interest in GOP politics.
In 1972, Lewis served in the U. S. Navy, attending the Navy Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. Lewis worked in sales for several companies, including Ashland Oil, before teaching for five years at Watterson College in Louisville, having begun in 1980, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister in 1980, having served as pastor for the historic White Mills Baptist Church, after attending the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. In 1985 Lewis opened a religious bookstore and Omega Bookstore, in Elizabethtown. In the early 1980s, he was a pastor at Friendship Baptist Church, located outside Hodgenville. Lewis has been married to Kayi Gambill Lewis since 1966, they live in Cecilia, near Elizabethtown, have two children. In 1994, Lewis filed to run against longtime Democratic Representative William H. Natcher in the general election in November 1994; the Second District was predominantly Democratic in terms of voter registration, Natcher had held the seat without serious difficulty since 1953.
Although Lewis had been endorsed by the state GOP leadership and Senator Mitch McConnell, he was considered somewhat of a "sacrificial lamb" candidate. The dimensions of the race changed when Natcher died in late March 1994. A special election was called in May 1994 to replace him. In the special election, Lewis faced a state senator from Hardin County. Lewis got support from numerous national Republican sources and many social conservative groups, enabling him to run a strong campaign in a district that had not elected a Republican in 129 years. Lewis tied Prather to an unpopular Bill Clinton and a proposal to raise taxes on tobacco, the staple crop of the state, he took advantage of the conservative tilt of the Second District. In the special election Lewis defeated Prather by 55-45 percent in an election with less than 20 percent turnout—a result, still considered a major upset, it was a result that many political pundits, as Larry J. Sabato noted in his Crystal Ball newsletter, saw as a harbinger of the Republican gains in Congress in the regular election that year.
Lewis was elected to a full term that November, when he defeated Democrat David Adkisson with 60 percent of the vote. One of the centerpieces of Lewis' 1994 campaign was term limits in Washington, he was one of five Republicans who signed a pledge committing themselves to a limited number of terms if elected. He himself had promised to leave the House in 2003, after serving four full terms plus the last seven months of Natcher's term. In 1998, Lewis sent a letter to 3,000 constituents in 1998 informing them he had changed his mind about running in 2002 and beyond. "I made a mistake in 1994, I admit that. I had said I would not run past 2002," he told the Elizabethtown News Enterprise in October 1998. According to the non-partisan website TheMiddleClass.org, Ron Lewis has voted against tax increases and expansion of social programs. In 2004, Lewis joined numerous Republican colleagues in sponsoring legislation that would allow lawmakers to override certain Supreme Court decisions by a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate.
Lewis likened his proposal to the existing right of Congress to override a presidential veto with a two-thirds majority. Lewis was known for his constituent services. After the closure of the Fruit of the Loom plant in Campbellsville in Taylor County in 1998, Lewis obtained $8.5 million earmarked for Kentucky Route 210. "If we had not had that road widened, we would not have secured Amazon.com in Campbellsville" to fill the void in employment, said John Chowning, a Lewis friend and administrator at Campbellsville University. In 2004, Lewis honored the Campbellsville author Betty Jane Gorin-Smith as "historian-laureate" of the Kentucky Heartland region. Lewis won a second full term in 1996 with 58 percent of the vote by beating former Kentucky Senate floor leader Joe Wright with a vote total of 125,433 to 90,483, he did not face another serious challenge until 2006. In the 2004 election, he defeated Democrat Adam Smith. In the 2006 election, Lewis defeated retired U. S. Army Colonel Mike Weaver, a former member of the Kentucky House of Representatives.
Weaver gave Lewis his first credible challenge in a decade, holding him to only 55 percent of the vote. Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Social Security Subcommittee on Trade Republican Policy Committee On January 29, 2008, Lewis announced he would not seek reelection in 2008 on the same day as the filing deadline.
Kentucky House of Representatives
The Kentucky House of Representatives is the lower house of the Kentucky General Assembly. It is composed of 100 Representatives elected from single-member districts throughout the Commonwealth. Not more than two counties can be joined to form a House district, except when necessary to preserve the principle of equal representation. Representatives are elected to two-year terms with no term limits; the Kentucky House of Representatives convenes at the State Capitol in Frankfort. The first meeting of the Kentucky House of Representatives was in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1792, shortly after statehood. During the first legislative session, legislators chose Frankfort, Kentucky to be the permanent state capital. After women gained suffrage in Kentucky, Mary Elliott Flanery was elected as the first female member of the Kentucky House of Representative, she took her seat January 1922 and was the first female legislator elected south of the Mason–Dixon line. In 2017, the Republican party became the majority party in the House.
Section 47 of the Kentucky Constitution stipulates that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. According to Section 32 of the Kentucky Constitution, a state representative must: be a citizen of Kentucky, be at least 24 years old at the time of election, have resided in the state at least 2 years and the district at least 1 year prior to election. Per section 30 of the Kentucky Constitution, representatives are elected every two years in the November following a regular session of the General Assembly; the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives is the chief presiding officer of the Kentucky House. The Speaker's official duties include maintaining order in the House, recognizing members during debate, appointing committee chairs and determining the composition of committees, determining which committee has jurisdiction over which bill. Traditionally, the Speaker has served as Chair of the Rules Committee and the Committee on Committees; when the Speaker is absent from the floor or otherwise unavailable, the Speaker pro tempore fills in as the chief presiding officer of the House.
In addition to the Speaker and Speaker pro tem, each party caucus elects a floor leader, a whip, caucus chair. † Winner of a special election Kentucky Legislature Kentucky Senate Government of Kentucky American Legislative Exchange Council members Legislative Research Commission
Kentucky
Kentucky the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Although styled as the "State of Kentucky" in the law creating it, Kentucky is one of four U. S. states constituted as a commonwealth. A part of Virginia, in 1792 Kentucky became the 15th state to join the Union. Kentucky is the 26th most populous of the 50 United States. Kentucky is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the major regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky, which houses two of its major cities and Lexington, it is a land with diverse environments and abundant resources, including the world's longest cave system, Mammoth Cave National Park, the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States, the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi River. Kentucky is known for horse racing, bourbon distilleries, coal, the "My Old Kentucky Home" historic state park, automobile manufacturing, bluegrass music, college basketball, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
In 1776, the counties of Virginia beyond the Appalachian Mountains became known as Kentucky County, named for the Kentucky River. The precise etymology of the name is uncertain, but based on an Iroquoian name meaning " the meadow" or " the prairie". Others have put forth the possibility of Kenta Aki, which would come from Algonquian language and, would have derived from the Shawnees. Folk etymology states that this translates as "Land of Our Fathers." The closest approximation in another Algonquian language, Ojibwe translates it more-so to "Land of Our In-Laws", thus making a fairer English translation "The Land of Those Who Became Our Fathers." In any case, the word aki comes out as land in all Algonquian languages. Kentucky is situated in the Upland South. A significant portion of eastern Kentucky is part of Appalachia. Kentucky borders seven states, from the Southeast. West Virginia lies to the east, Virginia to the southeast, Tennessee to the south, Missouri to the west and Indiana to the northwest, Ohio to the north and northeast.
Only Missouri and Tennessee, both of which border eight states, touch more. Kentucky's northern border is formed by the Ohio River and its western border by the Mississippi River. However, the official border is based on the courses of the rivers as they existed when Kentucky became a state in 1792. For instance, northbound travelers on U. S. 41 from Henderson, after crossing the Ohio River, will be in Kentucky for about two miles. Ellis Park, a thoroughbred racetrack, is located in this small piece of Kentucky. Waterworks Road is part of the only land border between Kentucky. Kentucky has a non-contiguous part known at the far west corner of the state, it exists as an exclave surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee, is included in the boundaries of Fulton County. Road access to this small part of Kentucky on the Mississippi River requires a trip through Tennessee; the epicenter of the powerful 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes was near this area causing the river to flow backwards in some places. Though the series of quakes did change the area geologically and affect the inhabitants of the area at the time, the Kentucky Bend was formed because of a surveying error, not the New Madrid earthquake.
Kentucky can be divided into five primary regions: the Cumberland Plateau in the east, the north-central Bluegrass region, the south-central and western Pennyroyal Plateau, the Western Coal Fields and the far-west Jackson Purchase. The Bluegrass region is divided into two regions, the Inner Bluegrass—the encircling 90 miles around Lexington—and the Outer Bluegrass—the region that contains most of the northern portion of the state, above the Knobs. Much of the outer Bluegrass is in the Eden Shale Hills area, made up of short and narrow hills; the Jackson Purchase and western Pennyrile are home to several bald cypress/tupelo swamps. Located within the southeastern interior portion of North America, Kentucky has a climate that can best be described as a humid subtropical climate, only small higher areas of the southeast of the state has an oceanic climate influenced by the Appalachians. Temperatures in Kentucky range from daytime summer highs of 87 °F to the winter low of 23 °F; the average precipitation is 46 inches a year.
Kentucky experiences four distinct seasons, with substantial variations in the severity of summer and winter. The highest recorded temperature was 114 °F at Greensburg on July 28, 1930 while the lowest recorded temperature was −37 °F at Shelbyville on January 19, 1994, it has four distinct seasons, but experiences the extreme cold as far northern states, nor the high heat of the states in the Deep South. Temperatures seldom drop below 0 degrees or rise above 100 degrees. Rain and snowfall totals about 45 inches per year. There are big variations in climate within the state; the northern parts tend to be about 5 degrees cooler than those in western parts of the state. Somerset in the south-central part receives 10 more inches of rain per year than, for instance, Covington to the north. Average temperatures for the entire Commonwe
Alma mater
Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university, school, or college that one attended. In US usage it can mean the school from which one graduated; the phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother", "nursing mother", or "fostering mother", suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Fine arts will depict educational institutions using a robed woman as a visual metaphor. Before its current usage, alma mater was an honorific title for various Latin mother goddesses Ceres or Cybele, in Catholicism for the Virgin Mary, it entered academic usage when the University of Bologna adopted the motto Alma Mater Studiorum, which describes its heritage as the oldest operating university in the Western world. It is related to alumnus, a term used for a university graduate that means a "nursling" or "one, nourished". Although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele and other mother goddesses, it was not used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. In the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the phrase is attributed to Lucretius' De rerum natura, where it is used as an epithet to describe an earth goddess: After the fall of Rome, the term came into Christian liturgical usage in association with the Virgin Mary.
"Alma Redemptoris Mater" is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary. The earliest documented use of the term to refer to a university in an English-speaking country is in 1600, when the University of Cambridge printer, John Legate, began using an emblem for the university's press; the device's first-known appearance is on the title-page of William Perkins' A Golden Chain, where the Latin phrase Alma Mater Cantabrigia is inscribed on a pedestal bearing a nude, lactating woman wearing a mural crown. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is cited in 1710, when an academic mother figure is mentioned in a remembrance of Henry More by Richard Ward. Many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name; the University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Other European universities, such as the Alma Mater Lipsiensis in Leipzig, Germany, or Alma Mater Jagiellonica, have used the expression in conjunction with geographical or foundational characteristics.
At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, an international university founded by the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2010, uses the term as its official name. In the United States, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, has been called the "Alma Mater of the Nation" because of its ties to the country's founding. At Queen's University in Kingston and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the main student government is known as the Alma Mater Society; the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses. For example, in the United States: there is a well-known bronze statue of Alma Mater by Daniel Chester French situated on the steps of Columbia University's Low Library. An altarpiece mural in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, painted in 1932 by Eugene Savage, depicts the Alma Mater as a bearer of light and truth, standing in the midst of the personified arts and sciences.
Outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. The statue was cast in 1919 by Mario Korbel, with Feliciana Villalón Wilson as the inspiration for Alma Mater, it was installed in its current location in 1927, at the direction of architect Raul Otero. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website
