Governor Patton.

It's a pleasure to be with you or Chancellor.

I don't know what to call governor.

Chancellor.

That's the.

Important thing.

Welcome to Newport.

Well, thank you.

It's been a pleasure.

We've been just welcomed with such warm hospitality.

So thank you.

I want to talk to you about this phase of your life as chancellor of U Pike and as we were talking before we started rolling, you came at a very pivotal time in the University of People's.

And was able to put together a good team.

The present president, Dr. Webb's outstanding.

He is.

We moved the college to a university, but he's really made it a university and we're very proud of it.

It's very influential in this area.

Talk about when you first came aboard, you Pike.

How did you find it?

Well, I mean, it's for you, Pike, for 50 years.

And I was on the board probably for 35 years, and we lost.

We had a good president and he left retired.

And we heard a new president in January.

And let's just say he was gone by August, and we had enrollment had dropped precipitously.

And so I told the chairman that I'd come in for a year and try to save it.

And I stayed for it.

And I got another young fellow from here in Pike County.

After about a year, I said, you know, you make a good president, but you got to have a doctorate.

Oh, I can get by without it.

But you can, you know.

So he got his doctorate and I recommended the board hired him without a search.

And he stayed a couple of years and moved on.

And then Dr. Webb came in and I guess five or six years ago, that outstanding job just transformed the institution.

Well, we'll talk with him about that.

I do want to talk to you about how you and your administrator can help transform the higher education or postsecondary education landscape in Kentucky.

I spoke with Lou Allen a few weeks ago and she said, of course, she's worked for seven governors and she described you, Governor Patton, as the most visionary and perhaps even courageous.

And the initiative that you took and transforming the postsecondary education landscape in Kentucky.

Talk to us about that legacy.

Well, of course, you know, in 1990, Kentucky made the most dramatic change in commitment to elementary and secondary education with the Kentucky Education Reform Act.

And it was really revolutionary.

And it has changed that element of education in Kentucky.

But, you know, in today's world, that's just the foundation.

You can't live in the foundation.

You have to build the house.

And that's some kind of more career oriented education after high school.

And we didn't want know some of that school to have to be two year.

Some of it would be one year.

And we wanted we didn't want to tell kids to you're about to go to college, but when you graduate, how do we say, you know, everybody ought to go to college, but you ought to go to vocational school?

Well, medical schools, your vocational school and lawyers and business.

And so all education practically today is vocational education or career oriented.

So we wanted we wanted it post-secondary education.

And I think that was the correct change.

And so few things worked out as well as you expect.

But our our Higher Education Reform Act, particularly involving the community colleges, has turned out better than we expected.

And that's very pleasing to.

So many of our viewers, perhaps, who have been around and watched Katie for a long time.

Will remember when you were on Kentucky tonight with then University of Kentucky president Charles Worthington, a pretty good exchange of ideas, I'll put it that way back then.

How do you think Dr. Worthington perceives post-secondary education reform now?

Well, I can't speak for him, but I understood his position.

He had a background in the community colleges, but they had grown up.

You had done a great job of raising the child, but it was time to move out of the house.

And of course, that was a difficult thing for him.

But it's worked.

And then I don't know of hardly anybody that doesn't recognize it was the right thing to do.

You know, we we found three studies that said it was time for the community colleges to become independent because they need to respond to the needs of the business community and their community and the needed Ashland or difference in their needs in Bowling Green.

So they'll be nimble.

A university, by its nature, is slow to change.

Cautious.

So it was time for us to move on to a higher level.

And I think we've done that.

I think we've got a good education system in Kentucky today.

Now we're underfunding it.

It's going backwards.

But the time that time I left, all of us, I believe our elementary and secondary education program was ranked about 30 or 32 in the nation getting closer to the average, the middle, which was about all we could aspire to.

Now we're falling back strictly because of a decline in funding and higher education and elementary secondary levels.

What would you say to policymakers, lawmakers in Frankfort, as they approach a budget session in 2024 about the investment that should be made in postsecondary education in Kentucky?

Well, you know, I would say you've got to look at where we need to be competitive in the United States economy.

And I'm I'm we're not there.

We're going backwards.

What are you hearing?

There are lots of conversations about the role of higher ed or post-secondary education, who which should serve?

Should it serve the business community?

Is it for enlightenment and a broader world view?

So there's lots of questions about, as you mentioned, and perhaps that's part of the hallmark of post-secondary education reform in Kentucky, of making sure everyone who is able and has a desire, has an ability to have some certification or degree beyond high school.

When you hear the conversation surrounding higher Ed now, what what are concerns you about what you're hearing?

Well, you know, there are some people say that we were over educating at the bachelor's degree level, and that may be true.

I don't know.

But we need to have a system that meets the needs of the business community, of the workforce now.

There is a value to just going to college, a person getting it out of high school, a residential four year program is a real good way to maturation that it allows young people to become mature and responsible.

But not that we can't do that for everybody, but we now there's there's a there's a value to the liberal arts college, but most of it now is focused on career development.

As you know, there has been lots of conversation about should there be a public four year institution in eastern Kentucky.

Your thoughts on that?

Well, I was for that when when the University of and Bible College was in.

It's bad shape.

We offered it to the governor, Carol, for free, and he's laughed at us.

That's not going to happen.

Well, I was early in my presidency here.

There was a movement for us to try to become a state university college.

But now, with this new leadership and there are professional schools, we couldn't have had a medical school or a college of optometry if we'd been in the state system and we're now starting a dental school.

So we're going to be a university providing for Central Appalachia over to West Virginia and western Virginia.

This this part of the United States fell behind because we didn't have the appreciation for the need for education.

Now, we were populated by three waves of labor that didn't need much education.

The first was agriculture, subsistence farming.

And then after the civil War, it was timber harvesting.

And then beginning about 1900, it was coal mining.

All of those professions, at least back then, did not require a lot of education.

Coal mining does now, but it's much different than it was.

And so the net result is we've got a good education system.

The Bible High School and the other high schools at Floyd County Central School, Great Facility.

School of Innovation.

A dedicated staff and faculty.

But the society still does not really understand the need for education as much as other places.

And so it's more difficult to get our students focused on education because bluntly, too many of their parents don't have it and don't understand the need for it.

The Today's World.

That's my evaluation, and that's where I think the University of Chicago has a great future in contributing to the appreciation of education in Appalachia.

The other pivotal plank of your administration was compensate and worker's compensation reform.

And you and legislators at that time agreed that there were a lot of generous benefits that perhaps were not as favorable toward a competitive business climate, shall we say.

Well, that's a long story that has never really been fully developed.

But in the last year of Governor Jones administration.

Well, let me back up and say, in previous years, influential eastern Turkey legislators like Herby discussion and Kelsey Friend had developed a pension program for coal miners paid for by the rest of the industry.

And it got to be a tremendous burden and the rest of industry said no more.

And so, Governor Jones, last year he called a special session and they made dramatic changes to the workers comp, primarily making sure that the coal industry paid its own expenses, made it a separate system, and acknowledged it was too too generous.

They couldn't do it.

And so that all came to a head in my first year.

Then I got elected with the support of labor and with the support of voters.

But if you don't have a job, you know worker's comp is not worth much to you.

And this is going to go the coal companies were paid 100% of their wages in worker's compensation.

Nobody could do that.

And so we had to do it, didn't want to do it.

But we we did what needed to be done.

And I thought it was political suicide, but it turned out not to be that bad.

Right.

Well, I was going to ask you about that, because we know the coal mining community perhaps looked at that as a slight.

Right.

The coal workers did.

And the labor unions.

Were those fences able to be mended after that worker's comp?

A great extent, yes, to a great extent.

Before I left office eight years later, seven years later.

But in my opinion, Myriad, the business community, recognized that they had a business governor and he was going to treat business good.

And so the Republican Party, which has a lot of business people involved, did not promote a viable candidate for reelection.

I was it dissipated a knock down, drag out for reelection and trying to prepare for it.

And they didn't end up with a decent candidate.

Many Republicans privately and publicly said they voted for me because I was the only option.

Right.

But it was the right thing for Kentucky and it turned out to be the right thing for me.

Right.

And not to get on a sidebar, but we know that that candidate who ran against you then resurfaced as a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully.

To save change.

Well, you got to give her some something for Charles Ryan.

Gutsy young lady.

Let's talk about your other accomplishments, too, when it comes to setting a better course for Kentucky.

Criminal justice may not been called criminal justice reform back then, but certainly you took on that Adult education was important.

So every.

Child.

Early childhood education.

Talk about that.

Well, my daughter is is an expert in the area of early childhood development.

That's a profession.

She made a major prioritization in Kansas two weeks ago.

So she worked in my campaign.

Then she said that she convinced me that early childhood education was important and we had the opportunity of the coal of the tobacco settlement money, give us a source of new money not committed that we could invest in early childhood programs.

And it is very important that every expert and field realizes that in this world we've got to start children earlier than six years old.

And so that was that was good.

We worked with David Williams to get.

Former Republican Senate president.

Yes.

Adult education.

I knew that was his that he was interested in there.

And so we invited him to come here to work with us and introduce that legislation.

So we did it.

We had we we had a good we had a pretty good environmental record, particularly for a coal miner.

We we we passed some real good environmental laws and did some good environmental things.

So we had about eight or ten different fields.

And this book that I'm that are spared.

Well, actually going to go back to the University of Kentucky oral history, Jeff Psionic five is seven or eight years ago said we'd like to do an oral history of you and he would do it.

He would do about a two or three hour interview with me, about 50, some of them over three weeks, three or four year period.

Right.

And after was over, he said, why don't we get together and write a book?

And that was about three or three or four years ago.

And so he's helped me and composed it.

I've tried to explain the reasons and the details of some of the things we did.

As you say, many people that they say they do, I did something in education and they knew something I did in worker's comp.

And that's just about these development.

But there was a lot more than that.

And and the reasons we did them were we've explained and the details of what we did, good and bad.

We made mistakes that and we've discussed to the states.

So we've we spent about three years putting this book together.

This started by the time we got through.

It was about 450 pages.

Wow.

This is volume one, right?

I don't want to I don't want to read a four page book.

When the University Press of Kentucky became interested, they advised us to cut it down.

So now it's down a little less.

I think there's 300 pages.

I like to go about 250 pages in a book.

And and we had to we cut out some of the stuff.

But it for the Political Junkie, I think it would be interesting.

Oh, absolutely.

It it was a little bit about life and where I came from but primarily the of one chapter from my early life and one chapter of the coal business and then about 13 chapters for what we did as governor.

One chapter is on my wife's accomplishments duty, her work for women and children.

She she or she had the she had she had the option to address the labor side of me first lady.

But she didn't knew that her brother was a social worker.

She was very conscious of the plight of women and children.

And so that's what she picked up.

And she had a couple of people that helped her there, and she made it outstanding.

She claims she got about 28 pieces of legislation passed.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Well, she that's her story that and she said it to it.

And every time she'd have a bill come up, some of her friends like Robert Stivers and Steve Berry, the governor said Steve.

Nunn.

And others, and they would invite her to come on the floor with her bills be considered and she would streak over and whisper some of these legislators, are you going to be?

I said, Hey, there you are, UK lobby on the floor of the House or the Senate.

But she's not a registered legislative agent, so they gave her a pass, right?

They said they will throw you out of there.

She said, Well, the reception, they'll be out, but they never did.

But yeah, she she took advantage of the of the position in a very meaningful way about period.

I do want to because we hear some clanging coming from your hands, Governor and I, we want to draw attention to that.

Real quickly before we move on to talk more about the book.

Talk to us about your your your ring game going on.

Well, again, I was president for four years.

Our basketball team won the NRA national championship.

We had about three or four women's bowling team national championships.

I lost their head on this finger here and lost it.

That's a cheerleader.

Was trophy of some sort.

This is basketball Next America ball.

That's football and that's bowling.

So and we've got I just don't have enough you just.

Don't have enough fingers.

I really have three or four more rings that.

You want to be able to lift your hand.

Over time that we did something significant.

We we ball our team members brains.

And I just bought one from Brazil.

Sure, why not?

That's what you can do is dancing.

Oh, that's what I call the cost to this is.

And I'm the only person on this campus that comes to work every day in a suit and a white shirt and a tie.

It's it's when you're as old as I have, you can be as eccentric as you want to be.

And.

And a collection from you buy ties right now.

So that's an 8080.

Orange ties or you pack ties.

This is for the undergraduate program.

I've got one for the medical school and one for the optometry school.

I'm going to have one for the dental school and then the rest of them.

We were out of Saint Louis one time.

And what about our financial guy?

He got us into a store and he started buying the orange tabs for me.

So I've got 18 or just rotate one a day.

Then I start over.

After 18 days, I got five suits, I wear one, I got five pair shoes that are just to say.

You're set.

That's the uniform.

I am.

That's the uniform.

Let's return back to your book because we know that of all the accomplishments you had in policymaking, there were also some missteps.

Yes.

Tina Conner, one of.

The.

Are you honest and open?

And do you reveal anything that we do not know about that situation?

I don't think that there's anything.

I do not go into details of that.

I just said it happened and I was wrong.

And it almost destroyed my marriage.

It took some time to repair there.

I think we've done that now.

We're very close now and but for instance, we were in the you know, Greg Stumbo at the time was the most powerful member, the General Assembly, Speaker of the House.

I mean, floor leader of the House control legislation, which was also a worker's compensation lawyer.

He didn't like what we did with worker's compensation.

So when it came to the Higher Education School program, he was opposed to that in some way, not because he had was opposed to it, but because he was balancing things out with me.

And I wrote him a very intemperate letter.

Now, I didn't show it to Shepherd.

I didn't show it to create.

They wouldn't have they would wouldn't have let me do it.

But it was a mistake.

I shouldn't shouldn't have done that.

That's just one of the mistakes that I get into there as well.

What did that cost you?

I mean, what?

Well, Greg was a pretty mature legislator, and after about a year or so, he got to be good to work with.

And I'd say for the last six years of our term, we were very close.

So he was a.

Little bit more mature than I was.

Huh.

You mentioned about how it's taken you time to prepare with Miss Judy First Lady Judy from that incident.

When you think about that, and that's almost more than 20 years ago now, how do you think that impacted your future political ambitions?

I mean, many have thought and you've said perhaps even the US Senate, what is going to be next after governor?

It probably did impact that, although in my position, I believe that my call for a tax increase had a lot more to do with not running for the Senate.

I certainly planned to run for the Senate, which was up one year after my term was ended, which gave me the year to lay the groundwork to do that.

I guess Jim money and I think I would have had a good chance at race.

But the year before we had a depression and we passed a budget which by the time the legislature adjourned, it was obsolete, wasn't going to happen.

And so I publicly advocated for a special session to raise taxes, and I didn't get much support for that.

Right.

And so we had to cut the budget.

So when we when I left office, we had cut the budget in Governor Fletcher's first year to what the current revenue estimate was.

I don't know why it turned out that way or not, but actually, over the four years of Governor Fletcher's term, he had very good revenue.

I had about 3.5 average annual revenue increase over eight years, which is about right.

He had about seven or 8%.

Steve Beshear had about 1%.

Steve had it really tough.

Well, yeah, he cut the budget more than a dozen times.

I mean, he had budget reduction.

Years because the revenue just kept.

Right.

Drove it off.

And and Governor Bevin did not have a lot of revenue.

And I haven't really analyzed where Governor Christie well.

He's in pretty good shape.

I mean, third year on track for $1,000,000,000 surplus.

A lot of the federal.

COVID.

Money with money.

Right.

They better be careful when that money runs out.

If you you've got to be real careful.

So what do you think about the fact that that was the Republican supermajority that pushed through House Bill eight, which was a year or so ago to reduce the personal income tax over a period of time to 0%?

I have real mixed emotions about that.

I recognize that our personal income tax is a hindrance to the business community, particularly the wealthy people.

I all our good friend, the very wealthy, moved to Tennessee.

They don't have that income tax.

But at the same time, I don't believe we ought to turn all that burden over to the working people.

And that's what the sales tax does.

I believe in a broad based tax sales tax, income tax, property tax, special tax to spread that tax burden out the whole society.

And sales tax doesn't do that.

Most most of the things that average people buy is tax.

A lot of the things that wealthy people buy are not taxable.

It's just a not for you to depend on solely.

And I don't know how Tennessee does it.

Well of course they they tax funeral fuels.

And they take us and and food.

Yeah yeah we did we did we we could or implemented 29 tax cuts during my eight years in office and not one person in Kentucky would recognize that we cut taxes.

Now some of those taxes were cut by by Governor Jones, like the before he left office.

He wasn't implemented until I got in office.

And that was the and the inheritance tax law.

It was a private page tax where you had we were charging private people.

So we exempted a lot of the private pension for that.

We implemented that with a lot of it was was court decisions and then a lot of it was like the provider tax.

We we repealed and we adjusted the automobile tax on the to be the the wholesale price instead of the retail price.

So there was 29 we documented 29 instances where we implemented tax cuts.

That sounds very Republican like Governor.

Well, it was like say so over some we did it voluntarily and some of it we did because we thought it was equity issues.

But, uh, you just that's Kentucky before the Civil War was one of the most progressive states in the nation west of the Alleghenies, leading getting ready to explode in the interior.

Louisville, the falls of Louisville was a center of commerce.

Everything came to Louisville.

We had, uh, of universe City.

We had the diocese in of Catholic diocese in town.

I guess, uh, we, we were a progressive state.

People like, uh, Henry Clay and Cassius Clay and people like that After the Civil War, the South was they were defeated, but they were united.

We were divided in the Civil War in for after, you know, these governors run around with these guys, with their little things in our ears, their pockets full of stuff.

Yeah.

Protecting the governor.

You know how many governors have been killed in office?

How many would you take?

Yeah.

Gobble, gobble.

Yes.

And that was as a result.

And he was probably dead when they swore to me.

And I don't know, but he it was a result of battles that originated in the Civil War.

The Campfield McCoy feud originated basically because of disputed the Civil War.

So we didn't have the capacity to invest in infrastructure or education, and we fell behind by 1950.

Well, actually, when I did Daddy, we could just say thank God for Mississippi and Alabama.

We were like 47th in the bottom.

And as I said earlier, we brought that up to near 30, which is where it ought to be.

Yeah, but it's going back down.

It's going back down.

And in fact, Mississippi is making some great gains.

We're talking to some folks down there, some educators, because they're doing some great work with early literacy and early childhood development and in leading the way.

So we can't say thank God for Mississippi when it comes to that.

I do want to visit some other elements that are maybe addressed in your book.

In addition to the Tina Conner incident.

You also had some campaign finance issues and patronage issues with the merit system.

These things came after the ten hour Conner incident that were near the end of your gubernatorial reign.

Did those also have an impact, do you think, on your immediate legacy now that we're 20 something years beyond, perhaps there's a different view?

I listen, I had great relationships with the press.

I didn't hide from them.

We gave them everything.

They treated me well until the tenure kind of thing came up.

And then they sort of tried to play catch up.

And that's what I really think a lot of that stuff amounted to.

I know they made a big issue out of the by passage summer said, going through the farm of a group of supporters of ours.

And they they tried to make that look like that that was favoritism.

After I left office, the inspector general over the Transportation Committee did a review of that situation and found out it was perfect, only legitimate.

And so I think that after the tenure kind of thing, the press tried to play little catch up.

Did you ever talk to Mark Hebert after that.

Whole time, Mark?

I never blamed Mark Beaver.

At one day he was doing his job.

However, Mark will tell you, I never, ever discriminated against with him in any way and talk to him when any time he wanted to.

Mm Let's talk about the Kentucky Democratic Party and where it stands now.

You know, even during your last few years in office, there were some shifts occurring where they were eventually would lose power of the Kentucky State Senate.

And then of that, of course, is, you know, a few years later, the House would fall to Republican hands, super duper majorities, as they're called now.

But we also look on the local level and a lot of the local elected officials identify as Republican.

How do you view the strength or the weakness of the Kentucky Democratic Party?

And is it in a position to make a comeback and win?

And what will it take to get there?

Well, I just do my careers.

Kentucky is a very conservative state, are where I started, Pure said.

We didn't take sides in the Civil War.

And after the war we sided with the losers.

And so we became a Southerner state in almost every respect except party registration.

And with the the the Civil Rights Act of the Johnson era, we had all these other states switched from different from the solid Democratic South.

All of them switched Republican except Kentucky.

And we maintained a Democrat tradition.

But the people were conservative and it started to sneak up on us by first term as governor.

We started losing cities seats.

We thought they were aberrations.

They weren't.

That was the that was the tide.

And you had switches and defections.

And well, in the last four for the second term, we had two switches for various reasons that made this Senate Republican majority.

And so it we are a Republican state.

And and you can have always been a Republican state in voter performance.

You're very forward.

You should have won his election against you.

Yes.

He was too overconfident.

He didn't work as hard as he had year.

He would just miracle to win that election.

How about you write another book about that?

Thank you, sir.

But then, of course, I knew that at one time I told David Williams when he was our ally, I said, David, would you look at running for governor after my term is over?

I said, It's going to be a Republican.

And he said, Governor, I don't want to be governor.

All I want to do is be the president of a Republican Senate that says, quote.

I laugh.

I didn't last long.

Did your on your head.

That ain't going to happen.

But it did.

But it did.

And so I may and then, as I explained earlier, for some reason, the Republicans didn't put in a valid candidate.

So when my term was over, with all due to Ben Chandler and his legacy, I knew he couldn't possibly win.

And Ernie Fletcher was a good was a perfect candidate, a preacher at air Force pilot, a lawyer, a articulate person.

He got he's a good man.

He was a good person.

But he Terry, he got some young Turks in there that didn't think the law applied to them.

And, you know, in my last year, as you say, the the ethics commission found that I had violated the ethics code and fired me $5,000 and laid out some very strict terms.

It's what the governor and the governor's office can do with the merit system.

Because you had hired members of your family on as merit employees, is that correct?

No, no.

No.

That one did.

And I had the they claimed that I had influence then I guess I had influence on teetotalers and half the the employment of a day police officer in West Kentucky or something like that.

So we so I forgot where I was at but we did then so he is he made his people, not him but he said really bad mistakes and allowed Steve Beshear to quit when nobody really wanted the Democratic nomination.

It almost fell into Steve Beshear.

Yeah, I know.

I don't care about right.

No, you.

I will run and so Steve Beshear won because some of our religious people had made mistakes.

And then obviously and Steve did a good job and he ended up getting a second term and but then when the Republicans came in there and won and then he made some mistakes and he made them itself, it was like every Fletcher he did it himself.

And and yet still, with all the things Bevin did, Steve and Andy only remember, what, five.

Thousand, 5000 votes.

Yes.

I think he's got a chance to win again.

But he'll be the last Democratic governor in my lifetime.

It's a Republican state, maybe almost equal to West Virginia.

Again, another Democratic state that flopped what happened in Obama administration.

A lot of it has to do maybe with racism.

But so why would it be close then?

I mean, if we think about the challenger of the Republican challenger to Andy Beshear, an African-American, why is it different?

He said such a good job.

It's it's it's it's just amazing.

That's a real challenges.

And it would seem like that maybe the people of Kentucky understand it, but that.

So I do want to ask you about when at the end of your term and of course, you know, Ben Chandler was running and against Ernie Fletcher, Did Ben ever blame you?

I mean, had your administration been squeaky clean without controversy right now?

I assume he has.

I don't know what he's done or what he said.

You know, I'm on speaking terms with Ben Chandler.

I think he would absolutely wrong in pursuing I he what he perceived as a violation of new campaign finance reform act.

That was new.

People will feel a little feel their way through it.

I think we live by the spirit and letter of that law.

We knew that law a lot better than Ben did.

We were lifted it, Governor.

We helped pass that law.

We understood it.

Uh, Skipper and I were very meticulous in living by that law.

And this is about the public financing?

Yes Yes.

You know what?

Essentially they said Jerry Ross, who admitted in my letter, didn't get a result, quit it, went to work for the Teamsters Union.

They paid him to help get their vote out.

Chandler claimed.

Well, after the election, after for you said the penny can't be bought votes all over eastern Kentucky.

And so I asked the state police investigated and they said they went to Foggy and said, where's your evidence?

See what have you.

I just sit by pigeon.

Well, hell, it was close.

You know, they want you would not do it.

And so they closed it.

And then four he said, well, they worked for the governor.

I said, okay, let's give the just give the attorney general about three detectives.

Let them investigated, which was a mistake, with all due respect to be in.

He's done a lot of good things.

We we partnered up on the criminal justice reform.

That was the combination of his problems and my problems.

But he he to use that to try to put me in jail to enhance his, uh, chance of being governor.

What I think is so interesting is that you just said a moment ago that you don't envision another Democratic governor, perhaps after Andy Beshear, if he secures a second term in your lifetime.

Well, I'm 86 years old, so that ain't going to be very long.

But, uh, that would be bad, period.

I think we're basically a Republican state, and it'll probably take 20 years of Republican rule for the people to really understand what they're trying to do.

I just.

What does the Democratic Party do then?

Well, it's not the party, it's the people.

But I'm a Democrat.

I'm a Democrat because I believe in labor unions.

I believe in regulation business.

I believe in inheritance tax.

I believe in two of the things that Democrats have been historically for nationally, and Republicans are against all of them.

And what are those two things?

And the rural.

Element, I mean, my memory is maybe six years old.

Well, that's no, I think that.

Do you believe that?

Final question.

Do you believe that these state constitutional races are being federalized, nationalized, that the the issues are a little bit more removed from Kentucky centric issues, that they're a boilerplate template from?

Name your conservative or liberal national organization and that's changing the tide.

Or do you disbelieve it's just flat out.

I think it's the social issues that could take is a very religious state and abortion is uh is a real issue with a lot of people.

Um, but it's a national issue that I can't complain too much because I use racial issues to be very forward with that.

But, uh, a lot of this stuff doesn't have anything to do with state government.

And, and the legislature has done some things that are wrong, in my opinion, done some things that are right.

But when, you know, the the Republicans claim to be conservative, if they're not going to use government to run your life except for where they want to and accept it the way your children are taught in school or the way you're you're you're one way to treat everybody or you're there's about a half a dozen of these social issues that the Republicans are for dictating to people what they ought to do.

And that that's what, you know, the Constitution says all of the powers and all of this delegated to the federal government are are delegated to the states or the people.

That or is whether the Supreme Court not be a lawyer, they got Roe versus Wade.

Right.

But they got it for the wrong reason.

All they had to do say is it or is it an individual freedom?

And it is.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that herself, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But so but, uh, Kentucky's very the state that needs government more than almost any other is for doing away with all the taxes.

And what do you mean by that when you say the state that needs the government more than any other.

We've got the lowest level of health.

We've got the infrastructure that work, we've got education that is more money.

Uh, we, we need we know there's lots of ways the social programs, you know, why we have to admit that there are people that are not productive enough to support themselves in today's complicated economy.

Now, I'm a strong believer in having them put in 8 hours.

I'm I'm I'm conservative in that I want to keep the government out of your life as much as we can.

But we we we can't keep a totally are, you know but, uh, I'm for I'm, for matter of fact, when we passed the federal welfare reform law under Clinton, I tried to get my secretary of Human Resources or human Medicaid to implement for the welfare that and I couldn't get it to have.

They just.

Oh, you can't do that.

You know, you just can't do that.

Interesting.

Well, Governor Patten, it's been a pleasure.

And I want to give you the last word to share with us.

You know, a fine time that you had in office, perhaps at a time when you were firm, that you were in the right office at the right time.

And I think that was true.

But I when I was young, I would be the last person in Kentucky that you would say would become governor.

When I was in college, I would be the last person that you would think become governor.

And as I say, I may write another book on that, cause we we reviewed that, by this way, this weekend with my family, all of the strange things that happened that allowed us to win that race.

But I've had a blessed life and I've I can't complain, you know, the good Lord says, Tomorrow, Paul, we get together.

I can't.

I can't I can't complain about it.

But I found actually right when I left office in 2003, my son started a coal mine and I started working for him.

I got my old work clothes out and I got out.

I used the torch and actually went underground a little bit and I enjoyed that.

But then in 2009 and we're talking about five years, six years, uh, this job here at the University of Pikeville opened up and it's been a blessing.

It's been a blessing for me to have something meaningful to do.

And I think I've done a good job for the university and for the interest now is making education in Appalachia allowed all over West Virginia.

Virginia got the same problems we got in emphasizing the importance of education and that Dr. Webb is committed to involving the community in understanding the importance of education.

And that's the fundamental problem.

We still have a lot of people in the adult community.

They don't understand how important education is, and therefore they can't emphasize that to their children.

And the and the schools can't do it alone.

Got to have involved parents.

And where you got involved?

Parents, We got a good school system up here.

We have a good elementary and secondary school system in eastern Kentucky.

We just don't have enough parents that emphasize how important that is and that my parents did.

My dad started out as a schoolteacher in a one room school in Orange County.

The Asian people that come over here, they understand it and they excel and many African-Americans understand it.

But too many white people in eastern Kentucky don't understand the importance of an education.

Well, thank you, Governor.

It's been a pleasure.