Patrick J. Lucey was born in La Crosse on March 21, 1918, to Ferryville parents Gregory C. and Ella McNamara Lucey, was educated at Campion Academy, College of St. Thomas, and the University of Wisconsin, served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1946. He began his political career while managing his father's many businesses and agricultural interests in and around Ferryville, was elected to the Ferryville School Board in 1947 and became the local justice of the peace, then won the Crawford County Assembly seat the next year in an upset over State Assembly Speaker Donald McDowell. After losing his bid for the U.S. Congress in 1950, he joined other progressives to rebuild the state's Democratic Party, married Jean Vlasis of Milwaukee in 1951, and as State Chairman of the Democratic Party helped John F. Kennedy win the 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary while later working on the unsuccessful presidential bids of Senators Robert Kennedy in 1968 and Edward Kennedy in 1980. Elected Lieutenant Governor in 1964 and governor of Wisconsin in 1970 for the first of two terms, Lucey oversaw the merger of two state university systems into the University of Wisconsin System, overhauled the state shared tax formula, upgraded state courts with new appellate courts, realigned health institutions, introduced post-Watergate ethics and campaign finance reforms, and championed agriculture land preservation, stricter environmental regulations, and progressive energy policies. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed him Ambassador to Mexico, a position he held until 1979, and in 1980 he ran for vice president on John B. Anderson's independent presidential ticket.