Exclusive: Trey Grayson

You can't not like Trey Grayson.

His warm personality and loving nature serve him well as a husband and father of two girls, but the charm doesn't stop there. It doesn't even stop at the party line. His patience and desire to serve honorably has drawn admirers from across party lines and all over Kentucky. He's even drawn some praise from the state's preeminent liberal blogger, Mark Nickolas of Bluegrass Report, who said "While I don't want to help enable the guy who might defeat us in 2010 for the Senate or hurt Beshear's chance for re-election, I also don't want to simply knee-jerk my vote against a smart, able, young Republican who I've come to respect a great deal."

While Kentucky's Democrats recognize that Grayson has done an outstanding job as Secretary of State and that he will soon be a huge force to be reckoned with, Kentucky's Republicans love him almost like they love their favorite son, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. One reason for that, undoubtedly, is the immeasurable energy that Grayson has spent attending county Lincoln Day dinners. During the last primary season (in which Grayson had no primary opponent), Grayson attended nearly every Lincoln Day dinner. Now, for some of you in New Mexico or one of the numerous states with 50 or fewer counties, this might not seem like that big of a deal. Consider this, though. Kentucky has 120 counties, and almost every single one of them has party leadership who like to get to know the candidates for statewide office. That is some task for a young relative newcomer, but Grayson has met the challenge head on.

Louisville Congressional candidate Erwin Roberts had very kind words for Grayson. He said, "I've known Trey since our days in high school. He's always had great leadership skills. He's clearly been the best Secretary of State Kentucky has ever had, and he has a very bright future ahead of him in Kentucky and possibly national politics."

This alumnus of Harvard University undergrad, University of Kentucky Law School, and UK's Gatton College of Business & Economics (where he got his MBA) is the youngest Republican Secretary of State in the land, the Treasurer of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and the Chair of the Republican Association of Secretaries of State. Plus, he was the first Republican to win KY's Secretary of State office in 32 years. Did I mention that Grayson is only 35? He was 31 when he first took office.

I got Grayson on the phone for a few minutes as he drove home from a fundraiser and asked him about a couple of random topics. This Edgewood, KY native and graduate of Dixie Heights High School had all the right answers.

I asked him if government is going to become more lean and swift any time soon, sort of following the lead of the business community and the world economy which has been changing pretty drastically over the last 20 years or so. Grayson said that government needs to embrace technology more than it currently does not only so that it can deliver its services to citizens, it's "customers," more efficiently but also to empower the citizen taxpayers. He referenced his own attempts to put government-collected information online for everyone to see, and therefore approve and/or criticize, and also cited moves toward making more government services executable on the internet. For example, being able to reserve spots in driver's education classes online is not only more efficient and less hassle, it's also cheaper - saving taxpayers money.

I also wanted to know his take on why government is so slow to change in the first place. He cited some honorable reasons and some other more frustrating reasons. Grayson said that government naturally loses flexibility as it gets bigger, which is obviously a bad thing. However, government has also set some "rules" in place in order to try to depoliticize some government processes. Things such as bids on government contracts, hiring and firing employees, and other things are positively impacted - in terms of impartiality - by rules that are set in place which also, unfortunately, slow down those processes. While the "institutional memory" of long-time government workers is valuable, the fresh views of outsiders are as well. Since government is too bureaucratic, it is simply not as nimble as it should be.

When asked to cite someone who he thinks has done a noteworthy job at moving his government towards more swiftness, Grayson said he has been particularly intrigued by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels' moves towards the privatization of toll roads. Those roads are better maintained, he said, and the government has a big pool of money with which to service other roads. That sounds right to me.

All in all, Grayson is a good, down to earth guy who wants to serve honorably and innovatively. He's not afraid to take on big challenges, such as his recent work on changing the nation's primary system to something like a rotating primary. He has plenty of work to do, and hopefully plenty of time to it.