Kathy Karpan, longtime public servant, attorney and former Wyoming secretary of state, died Friday in Cheyenne at the age of 83.

Karpan’s tenure from 1987 to 1995 in the second-highest statewide office was part of a 40-year span in which Wyoming voters elected women to the position that oversees elections and business registrations, among other things.

While part of an Equality State tradition, Karpan also blazed a trail all her own as the first woman elected to a statewide office “other than superintendent, who wasn’t a widow, who in effect had the benefit of her husband having held office before her,” Karpan told the Wyoming Historical Society in an interview last year.

“My message to women in Wyoming would be: Don’t be afraid to run. Take the chance, you might win,” Karpan said in th

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