Martha Layne Collins, who in 1983 became Kentucky’s first female governor and the only female governor nationwide, and who was known for a corruption scandal involving her husband but also for bringing the auto industry to her state, died on Saturday in Lexington, Ky. She was 88.
Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s current governor — and, like Ms. Collins, a Democrat — announced her death. Her husband, Bill Collins, told The North Kentucky Tribune that she died at a retirement community where they both lived and that she had been in hospice.
When Ms. Collins assumed office, she was only the third woman in American history to be elected governor who did not succeed her husband in the office. She was also the highest-ranking woman among Democrats at the time.
In 1971, she was the former queen of her county’s Tobacco Festival now married to her college sweetheart, a local dentist, and teaching home economics and math at a suburban junior high school. Eight years later, she swept an all-male field in an election for lieutenant governor. Then, in 1983, she trounced the Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning in the race for governor.
Her agreeable demeanor was seen by critics as the sum total of her political gifts. In 1983, a rival, identified by The Lexington Herald-Leader as an “outspoken Democrat,” attributed her success to having “tiptoed through the tulips and not made any enemies.”
In 1993, her husband was sentenced to five years in prison for arranging for kickbacks of nearly $1.7 million from people doing business with Kentucky. She was not charged with any crimes.
“Martha Layne Collins’ example turns from inspiration to insult,” The Herald-Leader lamented in 1993.
Despite that view, her record includes an enduring accomplishment. Using trips to Japan and a generous incentive package, Ms. Collins persuaded Toyota to set up its first American manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Ky. The plant still exists and has drawn billions of dollars of investment from Toyota. Other car companies also subsequently set up factories in the state.
After Ms. Collins’s death, The Courier-Journal wrote that her efforts made car manufacturing “a mainstay of Kentucky’s economy.”
Martha Layne Hall was born on Dec. 7, 1936, in Bagdad, a small community in north-central Kentucky. She grew up in Versailles, a suburb of Lexington. Her parents, Everett and Mary (Taylor) Hall, ran a funeral home.
In 1959, she married Mr. Collins and graduated from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in home economics.
Her political career began when word got around about how devoted she was to the local activities of the Jaycettes, the women’s branch of the United States Junior Chamber, a civic leadership group. She was roped into volunteering for Wendell H. Ford’s campaign to become the Democratic nominee for governor.
Mr. Ford won the primary and general election. Ms. Collins rose from stuffing envelopes to positions of greater and greater importance in the party.
On social issues, she was fairly conservative. She opposed abortion except in cases of rape or incest. She did not often discuss her support for the Equal Rights Amendment. Instead, she advertised a willingness to order executions under Kentucky’s death penalty law as part of a strict anti-crime program.
Reporters complained that she was frostier than the state’s male politicians, even in private colloquies. Those close to her said her warmth and humor went unappreciated.
“I don’t mean for there to be two persons, but I guess that’s the way I’ve been portrayed,” she told The Herald-Leader in 1983. “I can’t help it, but I’m female. I’ll have to prove myself.”
Her gender put her briefly in the national spotlight. In the run-up to the 1984 presidential election, Ms. Collins was often described as a possible running mate for Walter Mondale, who wound up making Geraldine Ferraro the first woman on a major party’s presidential ticket.
Her biggest coup in office was the Toyota factory. The Kentucky Legislature authorized $147 million in incentives to the company; the plan was later estimated to be worth hundreds of millions more. It was 30 times what Ohio had recently offered to persuade Honda to build two factories.
Yet several years later Alabama would offer about double Kentucky’s package to convince Mercedes-Benz to manufacture there. In the next couple of decades, subdivisions proliferated in Georgetown, Ky., whose population doubled.
Ms. Collins left office a popular figure. Her reputation was damaged by disclosures involving her husband’s business dealings. She was widely said to have left the room while her husband concocted a kickback scheme with partners.
Her claims of ignorance included thinking that a $35,000 piano was a simple Christmas gift from friends after she had had major surgery and that she had no idea that her household wealth more than septupled in the three years after she took office.
In losing to Ms. Collins, Mr. Bunning vowed, “This is the beginning of a new Republican Party in Kentucky.” A few years later, he was elected to the House of Representatives from Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District. He later became a staunchly conservative senator.
Ms. Collins served as president of St. Catharine College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Kentucky, from 1990 to 1996. It ceased operations 20 years later. She was also named Kentucky’s honorary consul general of Japan.
In addition to Mr. Collins, she is survived by their children, Steve and Marla, as well as several grandchildren.
When she first became prominent in Kentucky, The Herald-Leader said that it asked Ms. Collins, ”What propelled her from teacher and homemaker to politician?”
“I guess growing up in a funeral home taught me about the uncertainty of life,” she replied. “I’ve always tried to put a lot into a day.”
Alex Traub is a reporter for The Times who writes obituaries.
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