The primary election is May 21, and there are several candidates seeking their party's nomination. The Pure Politics team has contacted each candidate with a primary opponent to find out who they are, and what they stand for. 

Heather French Henry is a Democrat running for Secretary of State.

Henry’s family founded Augusta, Kentucky and Middletown, Kentucky. She is a member of the Kentucky Daughters of the American Revolution, a historic preservationist, as well as holds the title of the first and only Miss America from Kentucky.

“First and foremost, people should know I am Kentucky proud, there is no doubt,” she said. “For the past 20 years, I have been a local, state and federal advocate for our nation’s heroes.”

Henry served as commissioner and deputy commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Veteran’s Affairs beginning in 2014.

“Having that experience in state government, leading a very large department under the executive branch, has a $102 million budget, I oversaw 910employees by the time I left,” she said. “I stayed under two administrations, the Beshear and Bevin Administration, I was really proud of some of the facilities we built, we had four veteran nursing homes, five veteran cemeteries, 120 counties worth of services.”

While working in KDVA, she worked to expand the women’s veteran program within the state, she also restructured the homeless veteran’s program.

“You learn to navigate so that you can make the most of those resources that are there,” she said. “So, when I talk about having the experience to move over to secretary of state, bringing that experience with me, is vital for the state of Kentucky. We actually helped to create polling locations in our veteran’s nursing homes, again just a very unique and creative way that we could not only add services for our veterans who are in those facilities, but also really bring the communities into those facilities, because we need more people understanding what the state has to offer for those heroes.”

Henry has been rumored to run for office before, she decided now was the time to run because of the breadth of her experience.

“This was a natural step for me, you know it was an open seat, secretary of state termed out,” she said. “I feel like I could do a great job stepping into that roll in a very bipartisan fashion. One thing that I really bring to the table is I have great credibility in my leadership for being bipartisan. I can provide a wealth of references, from both sides of the aisle that can attest certainly to the credibility.”

One of the first things she would like to do if elected, is to start reaching out to county clerks to begin fostering a strong relationship. When it comes to keeping elections safe, Henry says it’s important to hire a chief information security officer and one other cyber security employee whose only jobs are making sure the voter registration system is secure.

“I think that would also fall under really helping restore and to keep safe those records in the secretary of state’s office when you talk about business filings and organizations as well,” she said. “There’s over 250,000 of those that are vital information. And then also over the State Board of Elections, so I think those two personnel would be vitally important.”

As secretary of state, Henry is interested in several other issues as well. She would like to expand the one stop shop portal on the secretary of state’s website, which helps small business owners navigate the business world. Historic preservation is also something very important to her, as well as improving civic engagement.

“If nothing else comes out of my participation in this race, my eldest daughter Harper, and I have shared this story many times and I am so proud as a mom, she was able to register to vote after I filed for office,” she said. “So as a graduating senior, who will be 18 by the General Election, she had the right to do so, so I will be on her very first ballot, for her very first election. We talk about trying to engage not only all young people, but especially young women, to not be afraid to get in that role certainly for elected office.”

Heather French Henry is running against Jason Griffith, Geoff Sebesta and Jason Belcher in the primary.