John Y Brown Jr elected Kentucky Governor

International Businessman Entrepreneur
Kentucky Governor Motivational Speaker

Political Career

John Y. Brown Jr. became Kentucky’s 55th Governor on December 11th, 1979 after an outstanding career as a businessman and corporate executive.

John Y. Brown Jr. began his political career managing his father's campaigns for a number of statewide races in the 1950s and 1960s. He became involved with the Democratic Party at the national level when he served as Vice-Chairperson for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in Kentucky. Brown was named Honorary Treasurer of the Democratic Party in 1972, after conceiving and directing a series of national telethons that ultimately raised $19 million and saved the party from bankruptcy.

Announcing his intention to enter the Kentucky governor's race in 1979, John Y. Brown Jr. won the election handily in a whirlwind sixty-day campaign. He used his business expertise in filling his administration with successful business people and keeping his campaign pledge of "running government like a business."

Governor Brown leaves a heritage of new ways to measure governor's service to state

"When responsibility for the state's affairs changes hands at midnight Monday, Kentuckians will look back on an administration that was wholly honorable, efficient and, despite an unfavorable economy, effective in promoting the public interest."

"But the heart of Governor Brown's accomplishment was in bringing to Frankfort the ablest cabinet in Kentucky's history. A less confident governor would have feared having so many strong-minded people, many of them successful business leaders, as department heads."

Governor Brown received national recognition for reducing the size of government by 22%, while projecting Kentucky as a leading state in attracting new industry. He used the nationally publicized slogan "Kentucky & Co. – The State that is Run like a Business."

Kentucky Governor John Y Brown
Governor John Young Brown Jr.
1979 - 1983

(Photo Courtesy of
Kentucky Historical Society.)

"Ross Perot talked it, we did it - We gathered the best entrepreneurial minds and ran the state as a business!"

Governor John Y Brown Jr.