Martha Layne Collins - Early Political Career

Early Political Career

By 1971, Collins was the president of the Jayceettes, and it was through that organization that she came to the attention of Democratic state senator Walter "Dee" Huddleston. Huddleston asked Collins to co-chair Wendell Ford's gubernatorial campaign in the 6th District. J.R. Miller, then-chairman of the state Democratic Party, commented that "She organized that district like you wouldn't believe." After Ford's victory, he named her Democratic National Committeewoman from Kentucky. She quit her teaching job and went to work full-time at the state Democratic Party headquarters, as secretary of the state Democratic party and as a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. The following year, she worked for Huddleston's campaign for the U.S. Senate.

In 1975, Collins won the Democratic nomination for clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals in a five-way primary. In the general election, she defeated Republican Joseph E. Lambert by a vote of 382,528 to 233,442. During her term, an amendment to the state constitution changed the name of the Court of Appeals to the Kentucky Supreme Court; Collins thus became the last person to hold the office of clerk of the Court of Appeals and the first to hold the office of clerk of the Supreme Court. As clerk, she compiled and distributed a brochure about the new role of the Supreme Court, and worked with the state department of education to create a teacher's manual for use in the public schools, detailing the changes effected in the court system as a result of the constitutional amendment. The Woodford County chapter of Business and Professional Women chose Collins as its 1976 Woman of Achievement, and in 1977, Governor Julian Carroll named her Kentucky Executive Director of the Friendship Force.

In a field that included six major candidates, Collins secured the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 1979, garnering 23 percent of the vote. She defeated Republican Hal Rogers in the general election 543,176 to 316,798. As lieutenant governor, she traveled the state, attending ceremonies in place of Democratic Governor John Y. Brown, Jr., who disliked such formal events and often chose not to attend. By the end of her term, she declared that she had visited all 120 counties in Kentucky. Governor Brown was frequently out of the state, leaving Collins as acting governor for more than 500 days of her four-year term.

As lieutenant governor, Collins was responsible for presiding over the state Senate. Members of both major parties praised Collins for her impartiality and knowledge of parliamentary procedure in this role. She was twice called upon to break tie votes in the Senate, once on a bill allowing the state's teachers to engage in collective bargaining and another on a bill to allow branch banking across county lines within the state; in both instances she voted in the negative, killing the bill. During her tenure, she also chaired the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors, becoming the first woman to hold that position. In 1982, she was named to the board of regents of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.