John Y. Brown Sr.

John Young Brown (February 1, 1900 – June 16, 1985) was an American attorney and Democratic Partypolitician from Kentucky. He served six nonconsecutive, two-year terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives between 1930 and 1968, including one as speaker of the House in 1932 and one as majority floor leader in 1966. He also served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1933 to 1935 and was repeatedly an unsuccessful candidate for United States Senate and governor of Kentucky. He ran seven campaigns for the Senate, losing the general election twice and the Democratic primary five times. His son, John Y. Brown Jr., purchased KFC from Harlan Sanders and was governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983.

Brown was born near Geiger Lake in Union County, Kentucky to tenant farmers who named him after former governor John Young Brown. He graduated from Centre College, where he played football, and University of Kentucky College of Law. He practiced law in Lexington from 1926 to 1985. His practice involved representing coal miners. In 1929, he was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, and in 1932, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. However, in 1934, his at-large seat was eliminated, and he lost the Democratic nomination in the newly drawn 6th congressional district to Virgil Chapman. He ran unsuccessfully for United States Senatein 1936, losing to incumbent M. M. Logan, and governor in 1939, losing to Keen Johnson.

Although Brown was elected sporadically to the Kentucky House over the next three decades, he never returned to the United States Congress. He lost the 1942 Democratic primary for Senate to incumbent Happy Chandler by a wide margin. He returned to prominence by winning the 1946 Senate special election primary over Phil Ardery, but he lost the general election to John Sherman Cooper. He lost to Chapman again in the 1948 Senate primary and lost to Johnson again in the 1960 Senate primary; each lost to Cooper in the general election. In 1966, he won the Democratic nomination but lost to Cooper again in a landslide. Finally, he ran for an open seat in the 1968 Democratic primary but lost to Katherine Peden, after which he retired from politics.