Steve Henry (born October 8, 1953)[1][2] is an American politician and orthopedic surgeon who was the 52nd Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky from 1995 through 2003. He twice ran unsuccessfully in statewide elections, finishing third in Democratic primaries for the United States Senate in 1998 and for Governor of Kentucky in 2007.
Henry was born October 8, 1953, in Daviess County, Kentucky, and graduated from Owensboro Senior High School in 1972, when he was a starter on the Red Devil's Kentucky Boys Basketball State Championship team led by Sweet Sixteen Tournament MVP, Jerry Thruston. He attended Western Kentucky University and was elected Student Body President in this second attempt, after losing a close election the preceding year to Jeff Costello. As President of the Student Government Association and as a Kentucky resident, Henry also served as a voting member of the WKU Board of Regents. Henry was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, which also included as its members during that time, future Western Kentucky University President Gary Ransdell and future Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. Henry attended the University of Louisville School of Medicine and became an orthopedic surgeon in Louisville, Kentucky. While in Louisville he was elected to the Jefferson County, Kentucky Fiscal Court as a Democrat County Commissioner.
As an orthopedic surgeon, Henry won international acclaim. He played an instrumental role in the research, development, and use of breakthrough techniques using antibiotic beads. Henry and his innovative techniques received international recognition on CNN during the Persian Gulf War, when the beads were used to treat wounded soldiers. His work was widely reported by several other national new organizations and won him personal recognition from General Norman Schwarzkopf.
Lieutenant governor
In 1995, Paul E. Patton, then Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, selected Henry as his running mate for Patton's campaign for governor. Due to a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution, 1995 was the first year in which candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor ran together as a slate in Kentucky. Patton and Henry won the election with 500,605 votes (50.9%) to 479,227 (48.7%) for the Republican nominees, Larry Forgy and Tom Handy. During the 1995 campaign, due to complaints that Henry ran up charges for telephone calls related to his campaign that were made out of his county office, Henry repaid the county for those calls.
In 1998, Henry ran for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Wendell H. Ford. Henry finished third in the Democratic primary with 156,576 votes (27.6%) to 166,472 votes (29.3%) for former federal prosecutor Charlie Owen and 194,125 votes (34.2%) for eventual nominee Congressman Scotty Baesler. Baesler narrowly lost the general election to Republican Jim Bunning.
In 1999, there was considerable speculation that Patton would drop Henry from the ticket, and Patton considered dropping Henry,[3] but the two ran again and won re-election with 352,099 votes, 60.6% of the total in a very low turnout, defeating the Republican ticket of Peppy Martin and Wanda Cornelius.
While serving as lieutenant governor, Henry married 2000 Miss AmericaHeather French Henry. The wedding led to controversy over state resources being expended as part of the wedding and planning (see below).
In 2002 Henry advocated legislation that would mandate healthier lunch options for Kentucky school children and limit junk food in public schools [citation needed].
Henry served as lieutenant governor until late 2003, when Steve Pence was elected on the Republican ticket and succeeded Henry.
Controversy
This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutrality by separating out potentially negative information. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material.(September 2019)
In 2002 and 2003 it emerged that the United States Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky was investigating Henry for fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billings while he taught at the University of Louisville Medical School from 1996 through 2001. Then U.S. Attorney Steve Pence (R) had previously stated that he would not seek an indictment in regards to a criminal case.
The federal government pursued a civil case to attempt repayment. Henry counter sued claiming that the University of Louisville employees had verified his presence at the procedures before he had signed the papers. In 2003, Henry settled the federal lawsuit by paying the federal government $162,000.[4][5]
A 2006 editorial by the state's largest newspaper, The Courier-Journal of Louisville, questioned Henry's past record of billing errors. In 2000 and 2001 Steve Henry repaid the state for numerous improper charges. He blamed a Kentucky State Police trooper for his hotel stay during a beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, being charged to a state credit card. Henry was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2000; Henry ended up repaying $4,327 to the state for personal expenses of his that were charged to the state for he and his wife.
Later, he repaid the state $491 for personal telephone calls he made from his state office. Henry also repaid the state $1,804 for almost 1,000 photos and video tapes made of him over a nine-month period, including his wedding, that were made by state employees. He also repaid the state $1,800 for press packets for his wedding that were made by state employees at taxpayer expense. Henry also charged a four night stay during two beauty pageants in a Lexington, Kentucky, hotel – just 30 miles from the lieutenant governor's mansion – to the state.[6]
Henry also repaid the state $1,800 for services related to his wedding rendered to him by state employees.[7]
In September 2003, Henry paid the federal government $162,000 to settle allegations that he defrauded Medicare and Medicaid over a period of more than four years while he was a teaching physician at University Hospital.[7]
Subsequent to that case, Henry continued to claim that he had made a pledge to donate $100,000 to his alma mater, Western Kentucky University, without explaining that he had withdrawn the pledge and had paid less than $5,900 toward the $100,000 he had pledged.[7]
Campaign finance problems
On March 16, 2007, Leslie Holland, a former employee of Henry, filed a complaint with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance stating that Henry broke state laws when he used a federal campaign account to spend money on his race for the state office of governor and used illegal corporate contributions for that purpose.[8] This came shortly after the Office of the United States Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky acknowledged having received information pertaining to violations of federal campaign finance laws by Henry and his campaign entities.
In May 2009, a state audit, commissioned by a special state prosecutor, revealed that there were campaign finance violations during his 2007 run for governor.[9] Henry claimed in an interview that the problems listed in the audit consisted of only a small portion of the campaign's finances.[9]
In June 2007, it was reported that Henry was dismissed from the University of Louisville hospital faculty because of concerns about his attendance and performance and related liability problems.[7][10] This came after his campaign for governor falsely claimed, among other things, that Henry still performed surgery at the hospital. Henry had claimed that he was donating his salary from the university, but the university stated that Henry had not been paid a salary since 1996.[7]
In September 2009, Henry settled charges related to campaign finance law violations, agreeing to a $10,000 fine and assuming personal responsibility for approximately $600,000 in loans he made during his campaign for governor.[11]
Henry was scheduled to enter guilty pleas on December 21, 2009, to criminal charges related to campaign finance law violations.[7] Henry's plea agreement calls for him to be fined $500 and sentenced to 12 months in jail, to be conditionally discharged for two years if he engages in no further criminal conduct in that time.[7]
Henry ran as a candidate in the Democratic Primary for the 2007 election for Governor of Kentucky. He raised almost $1.5 million for the campaign, but approximately $700,000 of that was a loan (which was never repaid) from Henry to his own campaign.[9] Early polls showed him at or near the head of the pack in the Democratic primary due to name recognition. However, Henry finished third in the primary with just over 60,000 votes (17%), behind Bruce Lunsford's 21% and winner Steve Beshear's 41% (over 142,000 votes)[12] On election night Henry conceded and pledged his support to Beshear for the general election.
Related Research Articles
Heather Renee French Henry is a Miss America title holder, fashion designer, and veterans advocate. She is married to former Kentucky Lieutenant Governor Steve Henry.
Anne Meagher Northup is an American Republican politician and educator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. From 1997 to 2007, she represented the Louisville-centered 3rd congressional district of Kentucky in the United States House of Representatives, where she served on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. She lost reelection to Democrat John Yarmuth in the 2006 election. She then ran for Governor of Kentucky, losing by 15 points to embattled governor Ernie Fletcher in the Republican primary election for the 2007 Kentucky gubernatorial election. Prior to her election to the United States House of Representatives, Northup had served in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Northup ran again for her old congressional seat in the 2008 election, losing again to Yarmuth.
Wendell Hampton Ford was an American politician from Kentucky. He served for twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate and was the 53rd Governor of Kentucky. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor and United States senator in Kentucky history. The Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999, he was considered the leader of the state's Democratic Party from his election to governor in 1971 until he retired from the Senate in 1999. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history, a mark which was then surpassed by Mitch McConnell in 2009. He is the most recent Democrat to have served as a Senator from the state of Kentucky.
Louie Broady Nunn was an American politician who served as the 52nd governor of Kentucky. Elected in 1967, he was the only Republican to hold the office between the end of Simeon Willis's term in 1947 and the election of Ernie Fletcher in 2003.
Frank Daniel Mongiardo is an American physician and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Mongiardo is a Democrat and was the 54th lieutenant governor of Kentucky from 2007 until 2011. He was a member of the Kentucky State Senate from 2001 to 2007. He also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, narrowly losing in the general election to Jim Bunning and again in 2010, losing in the primary election to Jack Conway.
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.
Jerry Edwin Abramson is an American Democratic politician who was the 55th lieutenant governor of Kentucky. On November 6, 2014, Governor Steve Beshear announced that Abramson would step down from his position as lieutenant governor to accept the job of Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama White House. He was replaced by former State Auditor Crit Luallen.
Henry Scott Baesler is an American Democratic politician and former Representative from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
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.
United States gubernatorial elections were held in October and November 2007 in three states. The final results were a net change of zero among the parties. Republicans picked up the open seat in Louisiana and reelected incumbent Haley Barbour in Mississippi, while Democrats defeated Republican incumbent Ernie Fletcher in Kentucky.
The 2007 Kentucky gubernatorial election was held on November 6, 2007. In this election, incumbent Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher ran for reelection to a second term, but was soundly defeated by Democratic challenger Steve Beshear. A primary election to determine the Republican and Democratic nominees for governor was held on May 22, 2007, in which Fletcher and Beshear won their respective primaries. Steve Beshear's son, Andy, would also be elected to the same office 12 years later.
John William Conway is an American lawyer and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A member of the Democratic Party, Conway served as the 49th attorney general of Kentucky from January 7, 2008, to January 4, 2016. Prior to his election as attorney general, he was the nominee for Kentucky's 3rd congressional district in the 2002 elections, narrowly losing to Republican incumbent Anne Northup.
Louis Gatewood Galbraith was an American author and attorney from the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. He was a five-time political candidate for governor of Kentucky.
John Allan Yarmuth is a retired American politician and newspaper editor who served as the U.S. representative for Kentucky's 3rd congressional district from 2007 to 2023. His district encompassed the vast majority of the Louisville Metro Area. From 2013 onward, he had been the sole Democratic member of Kentucky's congressional delegation. Yarmuth chaired the House Budget Committee from 2019 to 2023. On October 12, 2021, he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022.
William Bruce Lunsford is an American attorney, businessman, and politician from Kentucky. He has served various roles in the Kentucky Democratic Party, including party treasurer, Deputy Development Secretary, and Head of Commerce. Lunsford was the Democratic nominee for Kentucky's United States Senate seat in 2008, unsuccessfully challenging incumbent Mitch McConnell.
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.
The 2010 mayoral election in Louisville Metro took place on November 2, 2010, alongside other federal, state and local elections.
The 2011 Kentucky Secretary of State election was held on November 8, 2011, to elect the Secretary of State of Kentucky. Primaries for this election were held on Tuesday, May 17, 2011. In the general election, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes defeated Republican Bill Johnson.
Andrew Graham Beshear is an American attorney and politician who has served as the 63rd governor of Kentucky since 2019. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the 50th attorney general of Kentucky. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the son of Steve Beshear, the 61st governor of Kentucky.
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 ever by percentage. It was also the closest race of the 2019 gubernatorial election cycle.
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.
