Ricky Lee Cox

Ricky Lee Cox (born July 6, 1958)^[1] is a dentist^[2] in Campbellsville, Kentucky, who served two terms from 1997 to 2001 as a Republican member of the Kentucky House of Representatives.^[3]

Cox was elected to the legislature in the 1996 general election, after the 10-year incumbent Republican, Ray H. Altman, a Campbellsville insurance agency owner, declined to seek a sixth two-year term. In 1998, Cox defeated Democrat Russell Montgomery of Campbellsville, 6,640 votes (50.3 percent) to 6,571 (49.7 percent), to gain his second and last term in the legislative chamber.^[4]

As a legislator, Cox supported legislation in March 2000 to require that evolution if taught in Kentucky public school be presented as a factor only within the individual species, not across species lines.^[5]

Cox, a Campbellsville native, has nine siblings, including Nancy Jane Cox Kenny (born 1967), Miss Kentucky of 1990, who is a television anchorwoman in Lexington.^[6] Cox's daughter, and hence Nancy Kenny's niece, Emily Cox (born 1986), won the 2008 Miss Kentucky, a title which expired in July 2009. Both Nancy and Emily Cox are Campbellsville natives, but they entered their respective state pageants as "Miss Bowling Green", where each was living at the time. Emily Cox began piano lessons at the age of five; Nancy Kenny is a talented gospel singer. Emily's mother is the former Jenny L. Smith (born ca. 1960) of Campbellsville, the wife of Ricky Cox. She has two siblings, Evan L. Cox and Evily Cox.^[7]

In 2000, Republican Russ Mobley, a retired Campbellsville University theatre arts professor, was elected to succeed Cox, who did not seek a third term. When Mobley declined to pursue a fifth term in 2008, Republican John "Bam" Carney, an educator at Taylor County High School, won the position. In the Republican primary, Carney defeated two opponents, including former Democrat Russell Montgomery, over whom Cox had prevailed a decade earlier.

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