Bob Babbage

Last updated August 15, 2024

Bob Babbage (born July 8, 1951) is an American public leader, business and civic entrepreneur. Babbage is the leading lobbyist of Babbage Cofounder,^[1] a firm specializing in government relations and business strategies for public decisions. He was elected as Kentucky State Auditor and Kentucky Secretary of State.

Early life and education

Robert Alexander Babbage is the son of Robert and Judith Johnson Babbage and grandson of Kentucky Governor Keen Johnson (1939–1943). He has one brother, Dr. Keen J. Babbage, an educator and author.

He is a native of Lexington, Kentucky and graduate of Henry Clay High School. He graduated from Eastern Kentucky University in 1973 majoring in journalism and political science.^[2] He holds an MA from the University of Kentucky Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce and an MA from Lexington Theological Seminary.

Babbage was assistant to the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky (1975–1976) and administrative assistant to Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll (1976–1979). Shortly thereafter he launched a career in financial management and insurance.

From 1984 to 1986 he was assistant to University of Kentucky President Otis Singletary. In 1988 he completed the Senior Executive Program at Harvard University. He received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from Campbellsville University in 1993.^{[ citation needed ]}

Babbage teamed with Kentucky Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive officer Dave Adkisson for the program Leadership Kentucky.^[3] Babbage is also a co-founder of Lexington Forum.

Politics

Babbage was first elected to public office in 1981 as Council Member At-Large to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. At that time, he was the youngest person ever elected to an at-large seat on the council. As a member of the council from 1981 to 1987, Babbage was instrumental in developing Lexington's first-ever 911 emergency communications system.

He also served as Budget Chairman and started Lexington's Senior Interns Program.

In 1987, Babbage successfully ran for Kentucky State Auditor serving from 1988 to 1992. Prevented from seeking a second term by state law which at that time prohibited constitutional officers from succeeding themselves, he subsequently sought the office of Kentucky Secretary of State serving from 1992 to 1996.

During his tenure as auditor, Kentucky voters amended the state constitution to remove the restriction on lotteries which led to the establishment of the Kentucky Lottery Commission. Babbage established guidelines and procedures for routine audits of the Lottery. In 2014 the Kentucky Lottery had total sales of $858.8 million and provided $276.1 million in revenue to the state budget.

Also as State Auditor, Babbage ensured that all audits of county governments were at current-year-status, many having been far behind. Twice during his tenure as State Auditor, he was awarded the Governor's Affirmative Action Achievement Award for successfully recruiting minorities in state government.

As Secretary of State Babbage championed a "motor-voter law" that simplified the process for registering voters and maintaining registrations, was active in starting limited liability corporations for Kentucky business and conducted the nation's first online vote count in real time. He also proposed One-Stop business licensing through the Corporations Filing Office of the Office of Secretary of State.

He managed the Election Day Task Force with the state attorney general and the FBI. Babbage and the attorney general named a task force on vote fraud reform that proposed legislation that was successfully passed and implemented. He also founded and chaired Democracy, Inc., a voter registration and education foundation.

Babbage contested and lost a close primary race for Governor of Kentucky in 1995. Babbage's signature campaign proposal to establish a pool of funds to provide college tuition scholarships to all high school students graduating with above average grades and attending Kentucky colleges was later implemented by the state. Following the election, he was named state chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party by Governor Paul E. Patton.

Babbage was the working chair in 2000 of the bi-partisan committee to pass a constitutional amendment for annual sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly. The committee was chaired by the Republican Senate President and Democrat Speaker of the House. After previously failing three times over Kentucky's history, the amendment to establish a short session of the legislature in odd-numbered years passed 52.33% to 47.67%.

Business and professional

Following tenures as Kentucky State Auditor and Kentucky Secretary of State, Babbage was vice president of the U.S. Corrections Corporation and a senior fellow at the Council of State Governments during the mid-1990s.

During that time, President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice chaired by Attorney General Janet Reno and later by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell later named him to the Advisory Committee for Cultural Diplomacy.

In 1995 he re-branded InterSouth, Inc., formed in 1994, as Babbage Cofounder.

Related Research Articles

The governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is the head of government in Kentucky. Sixty-two men and one woman have served as governor of Kentucky. The governor's term is four years in length; since 1992, incumbents have been able to seek re-election once before becoming ineligible for four years. Throughout the state's history, four men have served two non-consecutive terms as governor, and four others have served two consecutive terms, the most recent being current governor Andy Beshear, who was re-elected to a second term on November 7, 2023. Kentucky is one of only five U.S. states that hold gubernatorial elections in odd-numbered years.

Ralph Campbell Jr. was an American politician and auditor who served as the North Carolina State Auditor from 1993 to 2005. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American to hold statewide elected executive office in North Carolina. Campbell was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and he attended St. Augustine's College. He graduated with a degree in business administration in 1968, and served in the United States Army Reserve from 1971 until 1977. After leaving the reserve, he worked various government jobs before being elected to the Raleigh City Council in 1985.

Paul Edward Patton 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.

Colonel Martha Layne Collins is an American former businesswoman and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky; she served as the state's 56th governor from 1983 to 1987, the first woman to hold the office and the only one to date. 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.

Wallace Glenn Wilkinson was an American businessman and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. From 1987 to 1991, he served as the state's 57th governor. Wilkinson dropped out of college at the University of Kentucky in 1962 to attend to a book retail business he started. The business rapidly became a national success, and Wilkinson re-invested his profits in real estate, farming, transportation, banking, coal, and construction ventures, becoming extremely wealthy. In 1987, he joined a crowded field in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. After running behind two former governors and the sitting lieutenant governor for most of the race, Wilkinson began to climb in the polls after hiring then-unknown campaign consultant James Carville. Wilkinson campaigned on a promise of no new taxes and advocated a state lottery as an alternative means of raising money for the state. Wilkinson surprised most political observers by winning the primary and going on to defeat his Republican challenger in the general election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ned Breathitt</span> American politician

Edward Thompson Breathitt Jr. was an American politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A member of one of the state's political families, he was the 51st Governor of Kentucky, serving from 1963 to 1967. After serving in World War II and graduating from the University of Kentucky, Breathitt worked on the presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson, the senatorial campaign of Alben Barkley, and the gubernatorial campaign of Bert T. Combs. When Combs won the governorship in 1959, he appointed Breathitt as personnel commissioner, where he wrote legislation establishing the first merit system for state employees. He continued to hold appointive offices throughout Combs' tenure, and in 1962, Combs endorsed Breathitt to succeed him as governor.

Charles Merwin "Trey" Grayson III is an American politician and attorney who is a member at Frost Brown Todd and a principal at CivicPoint. A former Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Grayson was a candidate in the 2010 Republican primary to replace retiring U.S. Senator Jim Bunning, losing to Rand Paul, the Tea Party favorite. He later was the director of the Harvard Institute of Politics. Grayson also served as CEO of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.

Jim Newberry was mayor of Lexington, Kentucky from December 31, 2006, until January 2, 2011. He defeated incumbent mayor Teresa Isaac by the largest vote margin in the history of Lexington-Fayette's merged "Urban County" government. This was also the first time in Lexington-Fayette history that a challenger had defeated a sitting mayor.

Eugenia Crittenden "Crit" Luallen is an American politician who served as the 56th lieutenant governor of Kentucky from November 13, 2014, to December 8, 2015. Luallen previously served as Kentucky State Auditor.

As established and defined by the Kentucky Constitution, the government of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is composed of three branches: the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.

The following table indicates the party of elected officials in the U.S. state of Kentucky:

Steven Lynn Beshear is an American attorney and politician who served as the 61st governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015. He 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.

Ryan Francis Quarles is an academic administrator and American politician who was the Agriculture Commissioner of Kentucky from 2016 to 2024 and a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 2011 to 2016. He has served as president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System since 2024.

James P. Gray II is an American politician who is the Kentucky Secretary of Transportation in the administration of Governor Andy Beshear. He is the former mayor of Lexington, Kentucky from 2011 to 2019. Gray served as the city's vice-mayor from 2006 to 2010 before being elected mayor in November 2010. Gray won re-election to another four-year term on November 4, 2014. In 2016, he ran for the United States Senate seat held by U.S. Senator Rand Paul. Gray won the May 17 Democratic primary with nearly 60% of the vote but lost the November 8 general election to Paul. Gray was Chairman and CEO of Gray Construction, an engineering, design, and construction company headquartered in Lexington. Once elected, he took an advisory role as Chair of the Board of Directors to focus on his role as mayor.

A general election was held in the U.S. state of Kentucky on November 3, 2015. All of Kentucky's executive officers were up for election. Primary elections were held on May 19, 2015.

The 2019 Kentucky gubernatorial election took place on November 5, 2019, to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of Kentucky. The Democratic nominee, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear, defeated Republican incumbent Matt Bevin by just over 5,000 votes, or 0.37%, making this the closest gubernatorial election in Kentucky since 1899 by total votes, and the closest since 1915 by percentage. It was also the closest race of the 2019 gubernatorial election cycle.

A general election was held in the U.S. state of Kentucky on November 5, 2019, with all executive offices in the state up for election. Primary elections were held on May 21, 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Sand</span> American politician (born 1982)

Robert Sand is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the 33rd Iowa State Auditor since 2019. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Sand was assistant attorney general of Iowa from 2010 to 2017. In 2018, he ran for state auditor, defeating Republican incumbent Mary Mosiman. After considering a run for governor of Iowa in 2022, Sand opted to run for reelection. Sand was reelected in 2022. He is currently the only Democratic statewide officeholder in Iowa.

A general election was held in the U.S. state of Kentucky on November 7, 2023.

The North Carolina Council of State elections of 2024 are scheduled to be held on November 5, 2024, to select the ten officers of the North Carolina Council of State. These elections coincide with the presidential election, elections to the House of Representatives, elections to the North Carolina General Assembly and top state courts. Primary elections took place on March 5, 2024, for offices for which more than one candidate filed per party.

References

↑ "Babbage Cofounder website" . Retrieved 25 July 2012.
↑ Milestone Yearbook. Eastern Kentucky University. 1973. p. 564. Retrieved January 25, 2023.
↑ "Leadership Kentucky". LeadershipKentucky.org. Retrieved 2 February 2016.

Party political offices
Preceded by Mary Ann Tobin	Democratic nominee for Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts 1987	Succeeded by Ben Chandler
Preceded by Bremer Ehrler	Democratic nominee for Secretary of State of Kentucky 1991	Succeeded by John Young Brown III
Political offices
Preceded by Bremer Ehrler	Secretary of State of Kentucky 1992–1996	Succeeded by John Young Brown III

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "Babbage Cofounder website" . Retrieved 25 July 2012.

[2] Milestone Yearbook. Eastern Kentucky University. 1973. p. 564. Retrieved January 25, 2023.

[3] "Leadership Kentucky". LeadershipKentucky.org. Retrieved 2 February 2016.

[1]

[2]

[3]