Russ Mobley

Russell G. Mobley, known as Russ Mobley (born November 18, 1933), is a Republican former member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from District 51 (Taylor and Adair counties) in the south central portion of the state.

Prior to his legislative service, which extended from 2001 to 2009, Mobley was an associate professor of theatre arts at Baptist-affiliated Campbellsville University (formerly College) in Campbellsville, the seat and largest community of Taylor County. During his teaching career there from 1971 until his retirement in 2005, Mobley directed more than one hundred student plays, the first being Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat^[1] Another Mobley play was the 1987 adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof.

Mobley was not a candidate for a fifth two-year term in 2008. The Republican nominee, John "Bam" Carney, also an educator, was elected to succeed Mobley and still holds the seat.

Mobley holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He served in the United States Air Force from 1951 to 1955. He is a former member of Rotary International and a member of the Campbellsville Baptist Church.

Mobley was elected to the Kentucky House in 2000. He was unopposed in the Republican primary when the two-term incumbent, Ricky Lee Cox (born 1958), a Campbellsville dentist, did not seek reelection. In the general election, Mobley defeated the Democrat Russell Montgomery (since a Republican) by 1,305 votes. He won by an even larger margin in 2002, when he defeated the Democrat Henry "Butch" Wheatley by 2,417 ballots. He was reelected in his largely Republican district in 2004 and 2006 as well.

He served on the House Labor and Industry, Transportation, and Education committees. One of Mobley's legislative priorities was the widening of Kentucky State Highways 210 and 55, an $18.7 million project announced by then Governor Ernie Fletcher. The widening project in Taylor County was part of the larger Heartland Parkway, which will ultimately connect the existing Cumberland and the Blue Grass Parkways.

Some consider Mobley to have been one of the more conservative members of the Kentucky legislature. He supported the right to life and endorsed the anti-abortion legislator Stan Lee, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Attorney General of Kentucky in the November 6, 2007, general election. Mobley was a strong supporter of former Governor Fletcher whom he described as "a man who keeps his promises." He backed English as the official language and opposed same-sex marriages.

In the middle 1970s, Mobley made an unsuccessful race for the United States House of Representatives from the Lexington-based Sixth Congressional District. In 1981, he ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for the District 16 seat in the Kentucky State Senate, having been defeated by the incumbent Doug Moseley, a United Methodist minister then living in Albany and later Campbellsville and Bowling Green.

Mobley and his wife, Carole M. Mobley (b. 1938), a pharmacist, are the parents of three sons and two daughters: twins Jeffrey Mobley, an attorney in Nashville, Tennessee, and Gregory Mobley (b. September 21, 1957), a professor of Old Testament at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts; Joel Mobley (b. 1966), an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Mississippi in Oxford; Stephanie M. Woodie, an instructor at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, and Suzanne M. Bennett, a reading educator in the Green County School District and the wife of Joel Bennett. Gregory Mobley is the coauthor of The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots.

In 2011, the Campbellsville University theater in the Alumni Building was named in Mobley's honor. CU President Michael V. Carter, at the dedication ceremonies, said that Mobley "leaves a great legacy in this place."^[1]

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