On Monday, May 8, 2023, just 8 days from the primary election, Kentucky’s public television network KET put on a Soviet-style primetime softball interview of the incumbent Secretary of State Michael Adams. Most likely at Adams’ request, no debate invitation was offered to the other candidates running against Adams in the Republican primary. KET thus effectively functioned for the night as part of Adams’ re-election team, providing a free platform for Adams and creating the illusion that Adams actually has no credible opposition. Why is KET bending over backwards to support Adams’ re-election? We can only speculate, but the behavior of KET conjures echoes of old Soviet-era state-run media helping to run sham elections for apparatchiks in the old USSR. Curiously Adams fits the part rather well – a mostly unlikeable bureaucrat who has made no other effort to actually campaign or reach out to Kentucky voters at all. And like the old Soviet politburo, Adams seems smugly confident of his re-election, perhaps because it’s already rigged in his favor? We can only speculate, but if KET is comfortable playing the role of a state-run propaganda tool, we wonder just how far down the Soviet-style path Kentucky’s government and media have already traveled.
