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At the national level, Kentucky’s marquee election was clearly its gubernatorial race, which Gov. Andy Beshear won by about five points. Republicans went all out to defeat the incumbent Democrat, and the fact that they failed created one of the GOP’s biggest setbacks of the election cycle.
Also notable is the fact that for the last 20 years, the party that’s won the governor’s office in Kentucky went on to win the White House a year later.
But there was another statewide contest in the Bluegrass State this year that drew national interest, and for good reason. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported:
Kentucky voters on Tuesday gave Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams a second term as the state’s top elections official. ... Having survived a three-way GOP primary challenge in May, Adams campaigned as a moderate Republican willing to expand ballot access and square off against election deniers in his own political party.
I'm mindful of the fact that the vast majority of Americans outside of Kentucky probably have no idea who Michael Adams is. Folks also probably don’t much care about the administrative duties of Kentucky’s secretary of state.
But Adams stood out as an interesting figure in Republican politics because of his forceful rejection of the election deniers in his midst. In fact, he’s been rather unapologetic about it, running a campaign that told voters that his success would mean “closing the door on the clown show.”
He sat down with Semafor’s Dave Weigel in May and was surprisingly candid on this point.
“Misinformation is on the ballot — whether we’re going to be a fact- and rationality-based government, when it comes to elections, or whether we’re gonna let conspiracy theorists run the show,” Adams said. “It’s important that we have free and fair elections in a legitimate system. It’s also important for the image of our state and for our business environment that we’re not seen as a bunch of nut jobs, putting some kook into this very critical office.”
In case this isn’t obvious, in context, he was referring to extremists in his own party.
Not surprisingly, this led Adams to face primary rivals, whom he defeated. As the dust settled on his re-election bid, the incumbent appears to have prevailed with over 60% of the vote.
The point is not that Adams should be seen as a progressive voice in Kentucky. He really isn’t. On the contrary, Kentucky’s secretary of state is a conservative Republican whom most Democrats would disagree with on a wide range of issues.
But Adams also has a problem with misinformation, conspiracy theorists, “nut jobs” and “kooks.”
Will his win “close the door on the clown show”? Probably not, but when Republicans opposed to their party’s election deniers win big, it helps send a signal to the rest of the GOP.