Governing Magazine names KY Secretary of State a “Public Official of the Year”
While his elementary school classmates were outside playing, young Michael Adams watched newscasts of the Iran-Contra arms trading scandal, learning what politics shouldn’t look like.
Years after turning that passion into public service, he’s now Kentucky’s secretary of state and has been recognized as one seven “Public Officials of the Year” by Governing Magazine this month.
The publication, which covers policy and management in state and local government, commends Adams’ balance of handling election security and ballot access concerns in executing bipartisan voting reforms that began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It took a major crisis just to compel Kentucky to catch up with what the rest of the country had been doing for a long time, which is making it easier for people to vote,” Adams told the Herald-Leader. “Unfortunately, we’ve chosen to be a backwater for a long time and not keep up with current trends, and it took local crises being managed well to improve our standing. “
Adams said the recognition should be a reminder of the possibilities bipartisan leaders can bring to the nation, especially in the weeks following the Sept. 10 murder of Charlie Kirk, a conservative influencer, on a college campus in Utah.
The need to lean across the aisle took over when Adams’ first term coincided with the pandemic, just months before the 2020 presidential election. As voters balanced their health concerns with electoral freedoms, Adams realized the state’s strict election policies hadn’t been updated in their 130-year history — or, as he told Governing, “when you had to ride a horse to go vote.”
Tasked with the job of overseeing elections, the secretary of state had to navigate Republicans’ concerns around ballot security and Democrats’ concerns around voting access.
That took collaboration with Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who’d also begun his first term at the onset of the pandemic. The two successfully implemented plans to expand early and absentee voting, and add extra days to vote in person ahead of the election.
Adams said that Kentucky did not reach the same levels of public distrust seen in some other states in great part because of his transparent partnership with Beshear.
“Part of why Kentucky’s election in 2020 was not challenged, was not condemned, or even really even questioned, was that people saw routinely me and the governor at press conferences together, people with much different opinions about politics, but working in good faith to solve problems,” Adams said.
Kentucky would go on to implement further election reforms.
“Six legislative sessions in a row, we’ve had a bipartisan election bill that’s become law — sometimes more than one,” Adams, a Republican, told the Herald-Leader. “We’re the only state that’s doing that. There’s no other state in the country where you have Democrats and Republicans working together in good faith to improve elections.”
Adams’ electoral efforts were similarly recognized in 2024 by the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
Governing says its annual recognitions focus on local and state leaders with varying politics who have brought change to their communities and provide lessons to leaders elsewhere.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, was honored for overseeing his state’s 60% growth in gross domestic product.
Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman was posthumously recognized for her leadership and integrity that was “encouraging with young staff and direct with trusted senior staff.” Hortman and her husband, Mark, were murdered in their home on June 14.
“All the people who got the award have politics all over the map,” Adams told the Herald-Leader. “The one thing that we all have in common is we’re all modernizers, and we’re all people who put problem solving first, versus just being performative. It’s a real honor to be included with all of these people.”
