The Poor People’s Campaign pulled up a chair and asked Gov. Bevin to listen. He did.

The Kentucky Poor People’s Campaign set out a chair in the Capitol Tuesday and invited Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin to listen.

For the most part, he did.

“I’m all yours,” Bevin said to the group, which his administration had banned from entering the Capitol as a group for several weeks last year. “Tell me what you want me to know.”

In an interaction that lasted a little more than 20 minutes, the campaign touched on several issues, including eliminating a lifetime voting ban on Kentuckians with felony convictions, the wealth gap, gun violence in schools, and improving access to health care.

After a rally criticizing new regulations on how citizens can access the Capitol, members of the activist group assembled in a room typically reserved for meetings and press conferences. It was there that Bevin met them and, after he was chided by the group for launching into an impromptu speech, he listened.

Bevin started by asking how many of the people in the room were from Kentucky and then how many people in the room had grown up in poverty. When he started explaining why he asked those questions, members of the group quickly cut him off.

“No disrespect, but you really are consuming the time we want you to listen,” said Tayna Fogle of Lexington.

She then explained that she is one of about 312,000 Kentuckians who don’t have the right to vote because they were convicted of a felony. Fogle said she would like the governor to sign an executive order to restore voting rights for felons.

“We would like for you, who rescinded what Governor Beshear did, we would like for you to reenact that,” Fogle said.

Kentucky is one of three states that bans people who have felony convictions from voting. The constitution bans people with past felony convictions from voting unless the right to vote is restored by the governor, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Former Gov. Steve Beshear signed an executive order just before leaving office that would have restored voting rights to felons that met certain requirements. Bevin rescinded the executive order, saying it wasn’t constitutional.

He repeated his position that he can’t restore voting rights through an executive order Tuesday, saying it would take a constitutional amendment, which voters would have to approve.

“I don’t have the ability, I wish I did, to fix this with the stroke of a pen,” Bevin said. “This is a constitutional issue.”

Bevin said he would be “delighted” to see that provision eliminated from the constitution.

Arnold Farr, of Lexington, then directed the governor’s attention to the wealth gap in the country. A 2017 paper by economist Edward Wolff found that 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of the country’s wealth.

“We’re holding you accountable,” Farr said. “And not just you, any elected official. While this is still going on, more and more people are becoming disenfranchised, more and more people are falling into poverty. And while this is still going on, we’re going to continue to hold every elected official accountable and you need to have something to say (about) why nothing has been done.”

Laurel Mayes, a senior at Barren County High School, then read a prepared statement about gun violence in schools, asking for the governor to open a conversation with the community on how to address the issue.

“It is not normal for children to be frightened of going to school because they saw an image of an armed monster pop up on the morning news,” Mayes said. “It is not normal for students to be frightened for their lives when they walk into school. And it is not normal for a student to walk into school on Valentine’s Day and never walk back out alive.”

Bevin said he will work with the legislature to make sure “we will not stand for this kind of thing.”

The legislature has made a school safety bill their top priority of the session. It would set standards for school safety and calls for more school resource officers and mental health professionals, but does not provide new money to hire such people.

“There is only so much, at the end of the day, that can be done because every time you do something, somebody will try something else,” Bevin said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t stand in the gap.”

Just as Bevin got up to leave, Serena Owen of Florence spoke up and asked “remember me?”

Owen said she had submitted a petition to him, that he had kissed her grandchild and had promised to help her daughter who got kicked off her Michelle P Waiver, which provides Medicaid-paid services to adults and children with intellectual or developmental disabilities, when the family asked for a new social worker.

Owens broke down into tears as she told Bevin her mother voted for him and that his daughter believed in him.

Owens later said she had handed him a petition signed by more than 100 people to hold a town hall in Northern Kentucky to address health care issues, including issues with Michelle P. Waivers and the agencies that administer them.

“Just remember us, we’re family governor,” Owens said. “We’re family.”