Exit interview: Adrienne Southworth on Trump’s appeal and how Kentucky GOP can improve
When she was first elected in 2020, Republican Adrienne Southworth of Lawrenceburg was the youngest member of the Kentucky state Senate at age 32.
That’s still the case today, as she’s poised to leave after serving District 7 for one term following her May primary loss. Republican Aaron Reed, a former Navy SEAL who founded a gun store in Shelby County, went on to win the general election.
Southworth was the most outspoken Republican against her party’s redistricting maps two years ago. Both the Senate and Congressional maps were altered for Anderson County, her home county. Southworth at the time claimed she lost 100,000 constituents under the new maps.
In her four years in Frankfort, Southworth operated at times on the fringes of her party’s caucus. She became notorious early on for her vocal unproven claims that the 2020 presidential election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump was rigged — a point she still maintains today. There was no evidence — in Kentucky or nationally — that the 2020 election was stolen.
She co-hosted an “Restore Election Integrity” event in Frankfort in September 2021 and advocated for Kentucky to return to using only paper ballots and counting them by hand, while spreading election falsehoods and unproven conspiracy theories.
Southworth, who earned her law degree while serving in Frankfort, was a prolific bill filer. In 2024 alone Southworth filed or sponsored more than 100 bills, resolutions and amendments. She also considers herself a Liberty Republican, though that growing faction of the party hasn’t seemed to enthusiastically embrace her. Southworth is also a Christian, and that worldview, she said, has helped to shape the policy she worked on in Frankfort.
In a recent 80-minute interview with the Herald-Leader, Southworth reflected on her proudest accomplishments in Frankfort, the shifting Republican platform under President-elect Donald Trump, the difference between society’s understanding of “liberty” vs. “ordered liberty,” and how she believes the legislature’s choice to redraw her district in 2022 likely contributed to her loss.
Answers have been edited for space and clarity.
Lexington Herald-Leader: Your district was one of the ones that was re-drawn. How much do you think that played a part in why you lost?
Adrienne Southworth: This is one of those questions you ask in court and then squabble over in appeals. It was a substantial factor, in the legal term, which means if it were not the case, I probably would’ve won, but not definitely.
The factor was they had two opponents from the new territory that were not hurting for cash. Would they have been able to pull together that kind of money in my old district? I don’t think so.
H-L: When you reflect on your time in the Senate, what are some things you’re most proud of? I don’t know if you could call it being ostracized by the caucus, but we had talked about how some of your privileges were revoked at one point. Were your committee assignments stripped?
AS: Yes.
H-L: Do you have regrets over how that played out?
AS: No regrets. I never actually did find out why.
I was personally proud of myself (because) I filed an insane number of bills year. I don’t know exact percentages, but approximately half of that was because I cut all of my existing bills into pieces, so I didn’t have multi-section bills. I wanted each and everything to be a standalone vote.
When I got elected, one of the first things I did was make a list of stuff to do in Frankfort. I consulted that list every year before the session and made sure I was getting all of that stuff checked off in some way, shape or form. I bit off pretty much every single issue.
Probably one of the things I was proudest of was our vaccine mandate caucus. I started that issue my very first year, during COVID-19. In 2022 there were three of us working on this stuff. In 2023 we had new people get elected and then there were four or five of us, then seven or eight. I was really proud of how much were able to, when you care about an issue and actually pull people together, and we were able to do that over and over.
To me, that’s the way government was created to be, where we all come from different areas of the state, have different ideas and focuses. I call it sandpaper, where we all kind of rub off on each other and come to a consensus agreement. In Frankfort, that’s not what usually happens. Usually what happens is someone just decides what they want and twists enough arms to make it happen.
H-L: You talk about the way you wish Frankfort operated vs. the way it more often operates. A two-pronged question: One, what type of Republican would you describe yourself as? And two, Republicans have had a majority since the 2016 election. What do you think the party could do better, if anything?
AS: I think the question of what kind of Republican am I is an interesting one, because that changes with what the definition of Republican is, and the definition of what a Republican was in 2010 was defined by Rand Paul. He said a Republican is an empty vessel, and whoever is in it defines it.
I think that’s exactly what everybody has experienced over the last eight years or so; Republican is now defined by the president. What ever Trump’s doing, it must be Republican. And Trump totally threw the whole entire platform out the window.
Generally, the Republican platform pushes a very limited scope of government. All of the issues that are important to me — constitutional rights of all sorts — are reflected in that. By and large, the Republican ideals are trying to leave people alone as much as possible, and if they flounder, it’s not the end of the world. I feel like the Democrat’s ideal is more or less trying to make sure we have as many safety nets as possible, because if somebody flounders, it’s bad.
So, the type of Republican I guess I would say I am is, I’m very much more traditional, constitutional, small government. I think me and anybody near me is probably going to identify with the Liberty wing. It’s basically anti-McConnell, is what it is.
H-L: To your point of being a traditional Republican who values minimal government intervention, some of the more flashy policies Republicans have passed in recent years — keeping transgender girls out of middle- and high-school girls’ sports, the trans gender-affirming care ban, even DEI (diversity equity and inclusion), which didn’t pass last session but will likely come up this session — issues that, to some degree, involve government intervention, would you say those are in line with the fundamental platform of the party?
AS: Yeah, I think your question is, how do you compare government intervention on stuff like consumer protection, and then, if you respect parents’ rights, why wouldn’t you respect a parent’s right to choose this gender surgery or what ever for their kid. I definitely think that’s in line with the platform.
There’s a concept sweeping the Supreme Court opinions recently and it’s the concept of ordered liberty versus just plain liberty. The 18th century definition of liberty was ordered liberty. It’s old-school liberty. But now it’s turned into: liberty means license to do anything you want. And I don’t believe that’s the case.
We need to minimize interventions. But with this issue, specifically, the founders said this government only works for a ‘moral and upright people.’ And what that means is, you can’t actually take these concepts to their full imaginable end. There has to be some self-restraint in order to have self-governance work.
You have to acknowledge God in order to understand that you actually can’t create your own government and it work for everybody, because the whole concept of government is outside any of us. And as culture goes too far away from that and says we can do anything we want, we can say what’s a marriage and what’s not a marriage, and we can decide what we think gender is. It’s kind of like, when they said ‘girl’ in the 1700s, they meant a (biological) female.
H-L: You’re saying that liberty existing in that way is not legitimate, that people are fighting for a liberty that didn’t inherently exist in the original writing of the Constitution?
AS: It’s the wrong principle at the right time. The principle of, let’s make sure parents can choose everything for their children. But it’s the wrong time to apply that principle when talking about a child’s life or death.
H-L: So, you’re saying it’s the right principle at the wrong time when we’re talking about parents who, say, want their trans teen to get hormone therapy?
AS: Yes. I think such a life-altering decision can’t be made by another person other than the person themselves.
H-L: We’ve talked about Trump and Republicanism. Kentucky is a very conservative state. Trump won with 5% more of the vote share than he did in 2016. What is he offering that Kentuckians clearly like so much?
AS: Sometimes it’s about your opponent. Back in 2008, you could not talk politics at the dinner table. That changed with Obama; he made politics a national dinner table conversation. When Trump got elected, he made it to where politics was not something only nerds talk. Obama was a prose-type person, careful with every single word he put out.
Trump is pretty universally recognized as not giving off the air that he worries about every single word he puts out. He made it to where you can say anything you want to say, however you want to say it. Now, the culture has adjusted to being really matter of fact about things. Everybody is totally not into the packaged salesman approach. The only thing that works now is, I’m genuine, you can trust me.
Your original question — why does he have such an appeal? — because people in Kentucky are not into prose, generally. They like that matter of fact, I’m just going to tell it like it is, shoot straight from the hip, it’s probably inappropriate but it’s just what I think. People feel like it’s something they can identify with, and it’s familiar.
H-L: What’s your idea of a normal Republican, and do you think Trump can be considered a normal Republican?
AS: I don’t think anyone can keep a straight face and call Donald Trump normal. But then again, what is normal? I wouldn’t call him the quintessential perfect description of a Republican. But I do think, given the state of the country at the moment, he is the best and possibly only person who can be president right now.
H-L: Going back to state politics, what is something — doesn’t have to be policy — you think the Republican party in Frankfort can do better?
AS: Trying to understand the perspective of the other side, where they’re coming from. If you can actually understand what their interests are, you might be able to craft something that works for more people.
H-L: And by this other side, you mean Democrats?
AS: It could be, or it could just be opposing perspectives on that one particular issue in your caucus.
Republicans need to also have a better perspective and mission statement: why are we here, who are we serving, and who actually tells us what to do?
Because it’s turning into the party tells us what to do, and I don’t think that’s the correct mission. It’s the people who tell us what to do. But instead of leaning this way or that way for your constituents, people say, I’m going to lean this way because there’s so and so who’s considered a big wig for the party, they want this and I want to feel in style.
H-L: So, making sure policy is informed by the needs and wants of constituents, rather than special interest groups or big wig Republicans? And then, from there, crafting policy that maybe isn’t bipartisan but at least tries to incorporate wants from people who have different perspectives?
AS: Yes. There may be issues out there that maybe I can never come to actual agreement on with somebody. But there are, I think, a majority of issues that could be sand-papered, to have the coalition a lot larger than it is. The concept of, they worked really hard, we’ve come to as much consensus as we can, and even I — who wants to vote no whenever given the opportunity — can still vote ‘yes’ on this.
H-L: That seems like a solution everybody would want. Do you think your approach is an outlier, or do you think there are a good number of party members who also want that? When you have a party that’s a supermajority, Republicans don’t actually need Democrats for anything in Kentucky.
AS: I think there are a lot of people who want that approach, but fewer who know how to get it. And it’s a frustration, because everyone feels trapped in a political system when a lot of them would just rather do thoughtful work.
H-L: One thing I see that maybe you also see is the decline in civic engagement across the board, at the state and local level. Do you think state politics matters anymore to the majority of the electorate?
AS: I’m super concerned there are way too many people who have no idea about any of it. Politics has mushroomed itself as an ever-present thing hanging over your head that’s going to affect every last thing you do and breathe. People just don’t know where to start, so they put their head in the sand, even subconsciously.
