Big Money, No Whammys

Plenty of people are looking into running for GOP Sen. Jim Bunning's seat here in Kentucky next year, but the big money just literally got put on Democrat Jack Conway, Kentucky's AG.

Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway has raised $1.3 million in the first 60 days of his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Jim Bunning, Conway’s campaign announced Wednesday.

The Conway campaign called the fund-raising effort record-breaking, saying that no other Kentucky Democratic U.S. Senate candidate has raised that much money in one quarter.

Conway will face Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and Darlene Fitzgerald Price, a former U.S. Customs agent, in the May primary for the Democratic nomination. Fitzgerald Price has said she has raised about $15,000 so far.

Mongiardo hasn't yet said how much he raised during the second quarter of the year. In the first quarter, he raised $429,552 between Feb. 17 and the end of March.

Earlier this week, Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson announced that he raised $600,000 in this quarter. Grayson has formed an exploratory committee to run for Bunning’s seat, but has hedged on whether he will actually run. Bunning said Tuesday that he is still in the race but has not yet released how much money he has raised this quarter.

Mark Riddle, Conway's chief strategist, noted in a press release that of the $1.32 million raised so far, $125,000 came from Northern Kentucky, where both Bunning and Grayson are from.

And that $125,000 from NKY really is significant, because this here's NOBAMA/Creation Museum Country and about as red as it gets. It means Conway has a serious shot at Bunning's seat if he can raise that kind of cash in this state in this economy in just 60 days.

Dan Mongiardo now has some strong primary competition. I'm going to have to take look at Conway's platform stances. As AG, Conway's current projects have been suing Big Pharma for overcharging for Medicaid supplies and helping Gov. Steve Beshear go forward with his plan for video slot machines at Kentucky racetracks. It doesn't hurt that in his capacity as AG, he's going around the state offering seminars to help stop seniors from being scammed either.

One of these two is going to have to back down here at some point. I doubt the national Democratic party is going to tolerate too much primary infighting when getting this seat out of the Republicans' hands is a top priority in 2010.

Something tells me the Dems are going to need all the help in the Senate they can get if they want to keep 60.