(TNS) 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 of 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 fo

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