Matt Bevin

Mr. Bevin, who has spent $4.8 million of his own money trying to win a Senate seat, and now the governorship, in Kentucky, burst into the spotlight last year when he waged an unsuccessful attempt to knock off the state’s most powerful Republican, the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, in a primary. A former Army captain and father of nine (including four children adopted from Ethiopia) who grew wealthy founding and investing in various companies, Mr. Bevin has an up-from-the-bootstraps philosophy and disdain for what he calls “the welfare state.” It is a view that stems, he says, from growing up poor in rural New Hampshire, the son of a wood mill worker and a homemaker who raised six children in an old farmhouse with no central heat. After high school, Matt attended Washington and Lee University in Virginia with a four-year ROTC scholarship. Upon graduation in 1989, Matt was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain. After his military service, Matt worked for many years in the financial industry. In early 1999, a job opportunity with National Asset Management brought Matt and his wife, Glenna, to Kentucky. In 2008, Matt began helping out at Bevin Bros. – a bell manufacturing company that had been operated by the Bevin family since it opened its doors in 1832. In 2011, Matt became the President of Bevin Bros. Matt met his wife Glenna in 1990 while on active duty at Ft. Polk in Louisiana. She was a registered nurse (RN) working at a civilian hospital near where Matt was stationed. They were married in 1996. In 2012, Matt and his wife Glenna established the Bevin Center for Missions Mobilization in memory of their oldest daughter Brittiney.