Lucey won the 1970 Wisconsin gubernatorial election and served as governor until 1977, when he accepted President Jimmy Carter's appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to Mexico.

The ticket of Anderson and Lucey won 6.6% of the popular vote in the 1980 election, which saw Carter unseated by Republican nominee Ronald Reagan.

During World War II Lucey was drafted and served in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps in the Caribbean until he was discharged with the rank of captain in 1945.

[11] Lucey ran as the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin in 1966 but failed to unseat incumbent Warren Knowles.

Lucey ran successfully for a second term as governor in 1974, and served until his resignation on July 6, 1977, to accept a nomination as United States Ambassador to Mexico.

The idea was suggested in the 1940s and 1950s by Governors Oscar Rennebohm and Walter J. Kohler, Jr.[13] In 1971, Lucey raised the issue again, saying a merger would contain the growing costs of two systems; give order to the increasing higher education demands of the state; control program duplication; and provide for a united voice and single UW budget.

Madison faculty and administrators by and large opposed the merger, fearing it would diminish the great state university.

Most WSU faculty and administrators favored the merger, believing it would add prestige to their institutions and level the playing field for state funding.

Telemark host the American Birkebeiner each year, the largest cross-country ski race in North America.

He appointed a number of task forces to address minority concerns, including the Governor's Investigating Committee on Problems of Wisconsin's Spanish Speaking Communities, which identified the lack of programs to address the Mexican American and Puerto Ricans' lack of access to education, health, housing, and work across the state.