Paul Edward Patton (born May 26, 1937) is an American politician who served as the 59th governor of Kentucky from 1995 to 2003. Because of a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution, he was the first governor eligible to run for a second term in office since James Garrard in 1800. Since 2013, he has been the chancellor of the University of Pikeville in Pikeville, Kentucky, after serving as its president from 2010 to 2013. He also served as chairman of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education from 2009 to 2011.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1959, Patton became wealthy by operating coal mines for 20 years. He sold most of his coal interests, in the late 1970s, and he entered politics, serving, briefly, in the cabinet of Governor John Y. Brown Jr. and chairing the state Democratic Party. In 1981, he was elected judge/executive of Pike County. He made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 1987, but he was elected in 1991, serving, concurrently, as lieutenant governor and secretary of economic development, under Governor Brereton Jones.
Four years later, Patton was elected Governor, over Larry Forgy. The major achievement of his first term was overhauling higher education, including making the state's community colleges and technical schools independent of the University of Kentucky and organizing them into the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Shortly after Patton turned back a weak challenge to his re-election in 1999, two Democratic state senators defected to the Republican Party, giving Republicans an unprecedented majority in that legislative house. The economic prosperity that fueled Patton's first term success faded into a recession in the early 2000s. Faced with a hostile legislature and a dire economic forecast, Patton was unable to enact much significant legislation in his second term, and his situation was exacerbated, in 2002, when news of an extramarital affair and allegations of a sex-for-favors scandal broke. After initially denying the affair, Patton later admitted to it, but he continued to deny using his office to benefit his mistress. Later in his term, Patton was attacked for pardoning four of his political advisers who were indicted for violating Kentucky's campaign finance laws and for allegedly abusing his patronage powers. These successive scandals derailed any further political aspirations.
Since the death of Martha Layne Collins in November 2025, Patton is Kentucky's oldest and earliest serving former Governor. He is also the only living former Kentucky governor to have served in the 20th century.
Patton was born in Fallsburg, Kentucky, on May 26, 1937, in a retrofitted silo with no indoor plumbing, electricity, or telephone. He was the only son of the three children born to Ward and Irene Patton. The family moved, often, because Ward Patton, a teacher, was assigned to a different school every year. When he was hired by a railroad in Pike County, he and his wife agreed that she would remain in Fallsburg with the children, until they finished school. Patton attended Fallsburg Elementary School, a four-room schoolhouse in his hometown. He was active in the 4-H club, where he began to develop his public speaking ability. In 1951, he enrolled at Louisa High School in Louisa, Kentucky. He was an honor student, a member of the drama club, a football and baseball player, and class president, during his senior year. In 1955, he graduated with the third-highest grade point average in his class of 73.
After high school, Patton attended the University of Kentucky. During the spring of 1956, he was initiated into the Kappa Sigma fraternity. Later that year, he unsuccessfully sought a seat in the Student Government Association. In 1959, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. He was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from the University of Louisville.
In 1959, after graduation, Patton began work as a day laborer picking slate for the Sizemore Mining Corporation that was owned by his father-in-law. In 1961, he moved to Virgie and founded the Elkhorn Coal Company, with his brother-in-law. In 1972, he purchased Chapperal Coal Company and became extremely wealthy during the coal boom that resulted from the 1973 oil crisis. He sold Chapperal in 1978 and then helped develop Campbell Coal and Oil Supply into a major supply outlet in the eastern part of the state. He became a leader in the coal industry, serving on the board of directors of the Kentucky Coal Association, chairing the Board of the National Independent Coal Operators Association, and becoming a member of the Kentucky Deep Mine Safety Commission. He denounced the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 as "right in its diagnosis of the problem but wrong in prescription for the cure". By 1976, he had become president of the National Independent Coal Operators Association. He railed against a federal regulation that would prohibit strip mining on slopes of greater than 20 degrees, which would have effectively ended that method of mining in the Eastern Mountain Coal Fields and lamented the economic disadvantage imposed on Kentucky coal miners by the state's coal severance tax.
Patton was regarded as more moderate than most coal operators, in his relationship to labor unions. Most of his mine workers were not unionized, and those who were generally belonged to the Southern Labor Union, rather than the more confrontational United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Members of the UMWA local at Shelby Gap maintained that Patton was arrested for clipping a striking miner on a picket line with his pickup truck in the late 1970s. Local law enforcement officials claim no recollection of the incident, and there is no record of an arrest warrant against Patton or an actual arrest.
On October 18, 1976, Patton filed for divorce from Carol Cooley, saying only that their marriage was irretrievably broken. The divorce was final on February 25, 1977. Later that year, Patton married Judi Jane Conway of Pikeville, a secretary at his Kentucky Elkhorn mine. In 1973, Conway had divorced her first husband, Bill Harvey Johnson, with whom she had two children.
Patton was introduced to politics by State Senator Kelsey Friend, who arranged for Patton to be a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Friend also convinced Patton to help raise money for Walter "Dee" Huddleston's congressional campaign.
As the coal boom began to wane, Patton sold most of his coal interests in 1978. After a meeting with allies of his friend First District Congressman Carroll Hubbard in Madisonville on September 20, 1978, Patton considered a run for governor in 1979. However, he subsequently decided that he lacked the time to organize a campaign before the May primary election; a letter leaked to The Paducah Sun showed that he believed he was losing Hubbard's support. He joined Terry McBrayer's campaign, during the primary, and after McBrayer lost, he worked to elect John Y. Brown Jr., the Democratic nominee. Brown won the election, and Patton was appointed deputy secretary of transportation. He served only three months, before resigning to protest Brown's proposal for a coal severance tax.
In late 1981, Brown asked Patton to become vice-chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party. He would serve under Dale Sights of Henderson. Brown then informed Patton that there had been a change of plans: he had decided to appoint his father, former U.S. Representative John Y. Brown Sr. to the chair, instead of Sights. Brown's advisers convinced him that this would be politically damaging; finally, Brown appointed Patton chair, with June Taylor, daughter of former governor Ruby Laffoon, as vice-chair. The announcement was a surprise to most political observers, as Sights had been the odds-on favorite for the chairmanship. Patton served as chairman until 1983. During his tenure, he learned much about politics from Taylor and was introduced to Andrew "Skipper" Martin of Louisville, who would later become an important adviser and ally.