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Who Is Kay Ivey? Facts About Alabama’s New Governor

Kay Ivey was sworn in as governor on Monday evening.Credit...Marvin Gentry/Reuters

Robert Bentley, who resigned as Alabama’s governor on Monday, will be succeeded by Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey, who will be the first Republican woman to occupy the office. She is a familiar figure in Alabama, having served as lieutenant governor and state treasurer.

■ Ms. Ivey, 72, is the second woman to serve as Alabama’s governor. The first, Lurleen Wallace, was the wife of Gov. George Wallace and stepped into the role for about a year after state law prevented Mr. Wallace from running for consecutive terms. As a student in the 1960s, Ms. Ivey campaigned for Ms. Wallace.

■ Alabama elected Ms. Ivey, a Republican, as lieutenant governor in 2010 and again in 2014. She previously served two terms as state treasurer; worked as the assistant director of the Alabama Development Office; and was a bank officer and high school teacher. She grew up in the small town of Camden, Ala. (current population: 1,930), and worked on the family farm.

■ In 2014, while reflecting on her first term as lieutenant governor, Ms. Ivey noted that she had worked with the Legislature to reduce unemployment, shrink the state government and pass budgets that did not require midyear cuts because of overspending.

■ Her detractors, however, have faulted her for the near-collapse of the state’s prepaid college tuition program, PACT. The program, which allowed parents to pay into a state-managed account, began struggling in 2000 and declined further under Ms. Ivey’s watch. The Legislature bailed the program out, pledging $538 million to support it. “Ivey assiduously blamed the fall of the U.S. economy,” Roy S. Johnson, a columnist for AL.com, wrote in a recent piece. “But others have not been as forgiving. Nor have they forgotten.”

■ Ms. Ivey will take on the task of restoring order to a state political sphere that has spent a year nearly consumed by the scandal surrounding Mr. Bentley.

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