Craven, cynical and crazy. In Ky primaries, a few good candidates are hard to find. | Opinion
When it comes to the political spectrum, Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams is not even close to the middle. He is a full-blown, anti-abortion, pro-gun big C Republican.
Despite this fact, he might lose his primary for a second term. It seems he’s not quite right-wing enough, according to his opponents. That’s thanks to the lunacy of modern day politics, especially but not solely, in the Republican Party.
But in his first term, Adams has demonstrated competence and decency, two qualities that seem to be more and more elusive in our political life. Decent and competent should not be a high bar for a political candidate and yet it is. And as we get ready to go to the polls this weekend and next Tuesday, I beg you to consider these two qualities in every candidate you vote for.
Adams is a complicated character; we recently learned that he still provides legal work to election denier Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and for the presidential campaign of Nikki Haley. It’s not illegal, but it is unusual, particularly because Adams’ elected work in this state has been so consistently outspoken against conspiracy theorists like Kobach.
Adams, in fact, has been an outstanding defender of our democracy through some of its toughest challenges. He worked with Gov. Beshear to ensure a fair and equitable election during a pandemic that sent many of our other institutions into freefall. In Kentucky, Donald Trump won by an impressive margin but he lost the national election. Instead of ignoring fellow Republicans who entered into a national frenzy of election denial, Adams called them out.
One of the people he called out, Steve Knipper, is now one of his opponents. Knipper has run unsuccessfully for this position before and has filled out in the time in between elections by traveling around the state with Sen. Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrencburg on a “Restore Election Integrity Tour” that claims past elections have all been rigged, despite the fact that Trump and Kentucky Republicans have won most of them.
For the 5000th time, Adams says, Kentucky’s voting machines are not connected to the Internet and are not hacked.
His other opponent, according to reporter John Cheves, is Allen Maricle, 60, of Bullitt County, “who served three terms in the state House during the 1990s. He lost his re-election bid in 1998 following news coverage of his divorce and allegations by his ex-wife about harassment, unpaid child support and an emergency protective order.”
It’s not just that Adams deserves a second term. It’s that there should be many more people like him in office and many fewer like his opponents. What if, and just hear me out, what if we stopped voting for so many crazy people?
The beginning of the end
Although Trump has brought true psychosis to our electoral politics, this problem predates him. You might say it started in 2010 when an eccentric Tea Party libertarian named Rand Paul defeated a very competent and decent opponent named Trey Grayson. At the time of the 2015 gubernatorial primary, Jamie Comer looked like the competent, decent one, but he lost to another angry Tea Partier, Matt Bevin, and now he’s gone down the same conspiratorial road, seeing his path to higher office somewhere in Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Part of the problem is Kentucky’s closed primary system. An open primary system would be more likely to reward more moderate candidates who would be attractive to voters from both parties.
Today we are seeing candidates like Eric Deters, who tried to run his own nephew over with a truck. But at least he seems genuinely erratic, not just craven and cynical like Kelly Craft who now says she “misspoke” when she made the chilling statement that if she were governor “we will not have transgenders in our school system.” That appears to be the extent of her public policy ideas, except for extending coal policies that will make her husband more wealthy. Then there’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron, whose every other utterance includes the word “Trump,” even after Trump was found liable of sexual assault, and is still awaiting possible indictments in Georgia over his attempts to overturn his election loss. (On Tuesday, Cameron conflated the rape trial with the New York indictments and said both he and Trump are fighters.) Tell me again how these men who tout “family values” believe so fervently in a man accused of sexual assault by at least 20 women, charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, and last but not least, tried to overturn a duly run election?
Even Ryan Quarles seemed competent and decent until he was unwilling to say during a debate that Biden won the 2020 election. He knows much, much better.
The candidate with the most above board qualities in the race is Alan Keck, a small town mayor who has so many good qualities that he (probably) won’t win. The only hope is that the example he has set of a good Republican who also supports public schools and exceptions in our abortion laws will get enough support that the party hacks take notice.
Like Keck, Michael Adams is a staunch party man and a perfect example of a public servant who has worked toward the highest common denominator, not cravenly bowed to the lowest. It’s possible to be partisan and do the right thing, even if it’s all too rare.
