Matthew Griswold Bevin (; born January 9, 1967) is an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 62nd governor of Kentucky from 2015 to 2019, losing re-election in 2019 to Democrat Andy Beshear. He is the CEO of Neuronetrix Solutions, LLC.
Born in Denver, Colorado, and raised in Shelburne, New Hampshire, Bevin earned a bachelor's degree at Washington and Lee University in 1989. He served four years in the U.S. Army and attained the rank of captain. Bevin moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1999 while working in the financial management industry. He later took over leadership of the Connecticut-based family business, Bevin Brothers Manufacturing Company, one of the last remaining American bell foundries. He launched a primary challenge against Kentucky's senior U.S. senator, Mitch McConnell, in 2014, but lost by almost 25 percentage points.
Bevin announced he would seek the governorship in 2015 and won the four-way Republican primary by 83 votes. He defeated the state's attorney general, Democratic nominee Jack Conway, in the general election. During his tenure as governor, Bevin enacted right-to-work legislation, laws restricting abortion, and a law allowing the carrying of concealed handguns without permits. He also attempted to reverse Kentucky's Medicaid expansion. As governor, Bevin made headlines for his criticism of school teachers and for teacher demonstrations against his efforts to cut pensions in public education. Bevin lost his re-election campaign to Kentucky attorney general Andy Beshear in a close race. After requesting a recount, Bevin conceded the election on November 14, 2019.
Bevin was widely criticized for pardoning hundreds of criminals in his last days in office, including several people convicted of serious violent crimes and a convicted child rapist whose relatives donated $4,000 to Bevin's campaign from a fundraiser to free him. On December 23, 2019, it was reported that the FBI had questioned state representative Chris Harris about Bevin's pardons and on January 2, 2020, Attorney General Daniel Cameron asked the FBI to investigate the pardons.
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. His father worked in 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 has credited 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. Bevin was also involved with the county's Dairy Club.
Bevin attended a small Christian school and later enrolled as a student at Gould Academy, a private high school across the state line in Bethel, Maine, in the tenth grade. His tuition was paid by financial aid and work as a campus dish washer and various summer jobs. After graduation, Bevin attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, on a partial ROTC scholarship. He studied abroad in Japan and became fluent in Japanese. He earned a Bachelor of Arts 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 U.S. 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. Bevin was assigned to the 25th Field Artillery Regiment of the Army's 5th Mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Polk in Louisiana. 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.
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.
A lightning strike sparked a fire that destroyed the factory on May 27, 2012. Although he carried little more than liability insurance on the business and his losses were compounded by looters who stole 4,500 bells, Bevin vowed to rebuild, telling the Hartford Courant, "I'm a Bevin, and Bevins make bells." In late June 2012, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy announced that Bevin Brothers would receive $100,000 in grants from the state's Small Business Express program to assist in the rebuilding effort. Flanked by Senator Richard Blumenthal, Bevin announced in July 2012 that he would sell souvenirs including T-shirts, and bells and bricks salvaged from the gutted factory, to raise additional funds for rebuilding. Working from a temporary location, the company resumed limited production in September 2012.
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.
Bevin said that in 2011, Mitch McConnell recruited him to challenge incumbent Democrat John Yarmuth to represent Kentucky's 3rd congressional district in 2012. McConnell's chief of staff said Bevin requested the meeting and McConnell never asked Bevin to enter the race. Ultimately, Bevin and his advisors decided that legislative redistricting had made Yarmuth's district unwinnable for a Republican, and Bevin chose not to run.
On July 24, 2013, Bevin announced that he would challenge McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader and a five-term incumbent, in the 2014 Republican primary because he did not believe that McConnell was conservative enough. Despite a Wenzel Strategies poll immediately following Bevin's announcement that showed him polling only 19.9% to McConnell's 58.9%, the National Journal listed McConnell ninth on its list of ten lawmakers who could lose a primary election in 2014.
McConnell launched ads accusing Bevin of taking taxpayer bailouts, citing his acceptance of state grants to rebuild Bevin Brothers. Bevin responded with ads accusing McConnell of voting for higher taxes, government bailouts, increases in the debt ceiling, and confirmation of liberal judicial nominees. McConnell's next ad featured Bevin telling an audience "I have no tax delinquency problem, nor have I ever," then claimed his businesses had failed to pay taxes eight times and Bevin was late on a tax payment on his $1.2 million vacation home in Greenwood, Maine, in 2007. PolitiFact.com rated the ad "Mostly False", saying that Bevin Brothers incurred the delinquent taxes in 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, when the extent of Bevin's involvement with the company was "unclear". Regarding the vacation home, PolitiFact noted that Bevin's escrow company changed in 2007, and the new company failed to pay the property taxes on the home from escrow on time. Town records show that the taxes were paid by February 2009, and Bevin had paid them on-time every year before and after 2007. McConnell's third ad in as many weeks targeted Bevin for falsely claiming on his LinkedIn page that he attended a seminar affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The three-year program, which Bevin attended from 2006 to 2008, was actually sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum, which is technically unaffiliated with MIT. The discrepancy was first reported by The Hill in March 2013, and was clarified on his LinkedIn page at that time.