Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams is, by any fair measure, a conservative Republican. But in last year’s statewide elections, the Bluegrass State’s top elections official nevertheless faced spirited primary rivals, not because he did his job poorly, but because he rejected right-wing election conspiracy theories.
In fact, Adams sat down with Semafor’s Dave Weigel last spring 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,” he explained.
Adams ended up winning re-election, but this week, he sat down with The Washington Post to reflect on his experiences:
“I’ve been around politics a long time, but I hadn’t actually been in the position myself and it was quite a transition to go from just a regular, almost anonymous kind of guy … and then suddenly just months later, I’m a flash point for very emotional people. … It was quite a transition for me to go from being a total nobody to suddenly there’s people with machine guns outside my office.”
Adams went on to explain in the interview that he’s faced a variety of confrontations with election deniers, as have members of his family. (His wife and daughter removed bumper stickers from his campaign in order to avoid pushback from angry conspiracy theorists.)
Two weeks before Adams’ re-election, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan was trying to shore up support for his bid to become House speaker — with Trump’s blessing — and the Ohioan’s GOP detractors faced death threats from right-wing extremists.
It was against this backdrop that The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie explained in a column last week, “To be a Republican politician in the age of Donald Trump is to live under the threat of violence from his most fanatical and aggressive followers.”
After noting GOP members of Congress who’ve had to…
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