Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 8, 2014

Wendell H. Ford (born 1924) is a retired American politician from Kentucky. He was the 53rd Governor of Kentucky then served for 24 years in the U.S. Senate. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor, and U.S. senator in Kentucky history. After studying at the University of Kentucky and serving in World War II, he worked on the successful 1959 gubernatorial campaign of Bert T. Combs, and became his executive assistant. Ford served one term in the Kentucky Senate, was elected lieutenant governor in 1967, and in 1971 defeated Combs in the Democratic primary en route to the governorship. As governor, Ford raised revenue through a severance tax on coal and reformed the educational system. Due to the rapid rise of Ford and many of his political allies, he and his lieutenant governor, Julian Carroll, were investigated on charges of political corruption, but a grand jury refused to indict them. After his election as senator in 1974, Ford was a staunch defender of Kentucky's tobacco industry, and was Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999. At the time of his retirement in 1999, he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history.

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