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Kentucky Governor and Mayor Address Southern Legislative Conference

Official Photos, cropped

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin is urging lawmakers from 15 southern states including his own to be competent, capable, and bold.

Bevin offered his thoughts to participants at the 70th Southern Legislative Conference meeting in Lexington.

“We have increasingly in this country become agnostic as it relates to any number of things, our mores, our values, our principles, our convictions, our love of liberty. We’ve become fairly apathetic,” Bevin said.

Bevin said he worries the words ‘one nation indivisible’ in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance don’t carry the weight they once did. He said it appears America is increasingly becoming divided.

Saying he spent time professionally in investment management, Bevin says ‘fear’ and ‘greed’ move people, “And I think right now fear more than anything else has gripped America and much of the world. And it’s a time more than ever that we need men and women like yourselves to step up and lead.”

Bevin called upon legislators from the southern region of the country to be shepherds and not sheep.

Hundreds of lawmakers also heard remarks from the host city’s mayor, Jim Gray. Gray said a debt of gratitude goes out clergy across Kentucky in their efforts to help communities cope with turbulence as seen in violent events last week involving the shooting deaths of citizens following police response and the sniper style killings of five Dallas police officers.

“And they preached about unity, and healing, and peace in the aftermath of tragedy and tension and a lot of grieving. For that, I know that we all owe them a debt of gratitude," Gray said.

Gray said public servants like those at the conference could reflect on that with experience and knowledge.

Stu Johnson is a reporter/producer at WEKU in Lexington, Kentucky.
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