Last Call For McGrath Meets McConnell

Amy McGrath survived her primary against Charles Booker...barely...but she ended up winning by 2.8% in a race where she was ahead by 20% at one point.

Former Marine Corps pilot Amy McGrath held off a surging Rep. Charles Booker Tuesday to win the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate in Kentucky a week after ballots were cast, setting up a big money showdown with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November.

Booker, who won 42.6 percent of the vote, won Kentucky’s three largest cities — Louisville, Lexington and Bowling Green — but the more liberal voters in those cities weren’t enough. McGrath surrounded Booker, winning victories throughout rural Kentucky to win 45.4 percent of the vote.

“While each of our experiences are unique, as a woman in the military, I had to repeatedly fight the establishment during my 20-year career,” McGrath wrote Tuesday in a statement declaring victory. ”...A year after showing the country that Kentucky won’t hesitate to replace an incompetent and unpopular incumbent Republican like Matt Bevin, let’s do it one more time.”

Booker conceded the race in an emailed statement shortly after 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, noting that he had only narrowly lost after being a relative unknown when he entered the race. He said that meant Kentucky was ready for “big, bold solutions.”

“From this moment on, let’s take the frustration we feel and commit to fighting for change like never before,” Booker wrote. “Let’s dedicate to the work of beating Mitch, so that we can get him out of the way. Yes, I would love to be your nominee, but know I’m still by your side. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.”

It was an unusual primary. Delayed by a month over concerns about the spread of COVID-19, then conducted largely via absentee ballot, Kentuckians were left waiting a full week after Election Day for results.

McConnell’s campaign greeted the news by saying it was “great to have” McGrath in the general election.

“Extreme Amy McGrath is lucky to have gotten out of the primary with a victory, but her reputation sustained significant damage all across Kentucky,” said Kate Cooksey, McConnell’s spokeswoman. “McGrath is just another tool of the Washington Democratic establishment who has no idea what matters most to Kentuckians.”

I fully expect Mitch to run another lazy campaign tying McGrath to Pelosi, Biden, the Clintons and Obama, complete with "Will Washington liberal Joe Biden dare show his face in Kentucky?" and count on McGrath's unforced errors to win.

Sadly, he'll most likely win as a result.  What I fear is that McGrath is going to make the same mistakes Alison Lundergan Grimes did in 2014, as Joe Sonka's postmortem from six years ago details.

There isn’t a Kentucky political reporter whose opinion I respect more than CNHI’s Ronnie Ellis, who says one of the biggest errors of Grimes’ campaign was not putting ads on the air during McConnell’s primary fight with Matt Bevin so she could fully introduce herself to voters. The only problem with that theory is it assumes she ever fully introduced herself to voters at any point in the campaign. To a large extent, she never did.

Grimes’ reluctance to give in-depth interviews has been written about extensively, as well as her robotic talking-point answers that too often failed to provide detail on her positions. (I only received eight minutes to interview her in the entire campaign, and she didn’t directly answer a single question.) This was surprising to many who covered her 2011 race for secretary of state, where she came across as intelligent, candid and warm.

There were only about six things people knew about Alison Lundergan Grimes from this campaign, and she repeated them – and little else – over and over again. She is for increasing the minimum wage. She is for gender pay equity legislation and the Violence Against Women Act. She is for union rights. She is for creating jobs in Kentucky. She is not Mitch McConnell, who is against all of these things. She is for coal and gun rights, and she is not Barack Obama.

There were some other policies she mentioned and some details here or there, but they were never effectively presented. How many Kentuckians read her jobs plan, or knew how she was going to pay for any of its proposals?

Nor were voters given any real glimpse into who Grimes is as an individual. The fabulous writer Anne Marshall attempted to answer that last question in her profile of Grimes for Louisville Magazine, but was repeatedly stymied at the gates of the Grimes bubble. When Marshall asked Grimes campaign manager Jonathan Hurst to provide an interesting nugget about Grimes that few people know, he replied, “She loves Swedish Fish.” Eventually Marshall got her very quick interview with Grimes and talked about some personal details, but those were limited to subscribers to the magazine, and buried within a story that quite correctly portrayed her as a talking point machine that remains a mystery to many voters.

McGrath is in the same bubble now that Grimes was then.

She has to break out of it, and that means embracing Charles Booker and several of his policies.  If she runs a defensive campaign, she will lose and lose badly.

It's time to go after Mitch, and go after him hard.

Good Ol' Boys Club, Con't

It wouldn't be Kentucky politics unless Jerry Lundergan was in trouble with the Feds, and even in the era of Democrats coming under assault by Bill Barr's Justice Department, Lundergan has been dirty for decades.

Federal prosecutors want to present evidence that Kentucky Democratic Party stalwart Jerry Lundergan funneled corporate contributions to his daughter, Alison Lundergan Grimes, in her 2011 and 2015 races for Kentucky secretary of state as they try to prove he illegally did the same thing in her 2014 U.S. Senate bid.
However, Lundergan has not been charged in connection with alleged illegal contributions in the state races, and his attorneys have asked a judge to bar prosecutors from giving jurors evidence about them.

The new information about Lundergan allegedly making improper corporate contributions to Grimes’ two state campaigns was included in a document filed Tuesday by federal prosecutors.

The document was to provide notice that prosecutors intend to use the information against Lundergan and Dale C. Emmons, a Democratic political consultant, if a judge lets them.

The notice alleged that Lundergan, through companies he owns, spent a total of $325,602 for work on such things as campaign mailers to benefit Grimes’ 2011 and 2015 races. More than $260,000 of that total went to a person identified in the notice only as Person C.

Information in a separate defense motion indicates Person C is Jonathan Hurst, a Democratic political consultant who helped Grimes in her state races and managed her unsuccessful 2014 bid to unseat Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Lundergan’s payments to Hurst included $170,849 in October 2011 for a campaign mailing he ordered and paid for to help Grimes, according to the prosecution motion.

Lundergan paid Hurst and Emmons through companies he owned such as S.R. Holdings Co., the notice said. That is the same company Lundergan allegedly used to make contributions to Grimes’ 2014 race.

The motion prosecutors filed Tuesday also did not identify Grimes as the candidate Lundergan was helping, but other court filings make clear she is the Candidate A referred to in the case.

The motion said Lundergan made the payments during times when Emmons was helping Grimes’ campaign.

Prosecutors said they need to tell jurors about the 2011 and 2015 payments to show Lundergan’s intent to break the law by making corporate contributions to Grimes’ campaign in 2014 without reimbursement from the campaign.

“This evidence is relevant to prove the defendants’ intent, plan, preparation, knowledge, and absence of mistake concerning the crimes charged in the indictment,” the motion said. “Evidence of Lundergan’s prior conduct will establish that he knew and intended to use these same methods to contribute corporate money to Candidate A’s 2013-2014 federal campaign, and that Emmons knew and intended to facilitate these contributions by receiving the corporate payments.”

This is a major reason why Kentucky Dems fail, it's always the Beshear family baggage, the Lundergan family baggage, or both.  Meanwhile Mitch McConnell remains the most unpopular Senator in the country and nobody can beat him here.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

With the candidate filing deadline today, Joe Sonka at Insider Louisville goes over the 2019 Governor's race here in Kentucky and what and who we can expect on the ballot for the May 21 primaries, but who you won't be seeing is Bevin's current Lt. Governor, Jenean Hampton.

Gov. Matt Bevin finally made his re-election bid official on Friday, but this time he will not be running with his current Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton. Instead, the governor chose state Sen.Ralph Alvarado of Winchester, a physician who has sponsored legislation to limit medical malpractice lawsuits and create tax credits for K-12 students to attend private schools.

Republican Congressman James Comer considered a primary challenge against Bevin but issued a statement Sunday night explaining his decision not to make such a run – though not without adding a searing criticism of the governor’s behavior during his first term.

Instead, Bevin will face a trio of political newcomers in the Republican primary, including state Rep. Robert Goforth, William Woods of Corinth and Ike Lawrence of Lexington.

Goforth, a veteran and pharmacist, won a special election last February to the state House and won that seat again in November. He chose Lawrence County attorney Michael Hogan as his running mate, who lost a close primary race for attorney general in 2015.

Goforth has criticized Bevin for his harsh words toward teachers who protested his public pension reform proposal, support for charter schools, and the expansion of gambling with instant racing facilities that resemble slot machines.

Woods has a platform of opposition to Bevin’s pension bill, support for abortion rights and support for medical marijuana, with that tax revenue steered toward providing every public school with armed guards. Justin Miller of Florence is his running mate.

Lawrence, who filed for office just hours before Tuesday’s deadline, ran for mayor of Lexington last year, winning less than 2 percent of the vote in the primary. James Anthony Rose, also from Lexington, is his running mate.

On the Democratic side, the primary has shaped up as a three-way fight of big-name candidates, including Attorney General Andy Beshear, House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins and the former state Auditor Adam Edelen.

Beshear chose Jacqueline Coleman as his running mate, a teacher, basketball coach and current assistant principal at Nelson County High School. The other two gubernatorial candidates both looked to Louisville for their running mates, with Adkins choosing the former Jefferson County Board of Education member Steph Horne, and Edelen tapping the prominent businessman Gill Holland.

Perennial candidate Geoff Young — who has lost by wide margins in five races over the last seven years — is also running as a Democrat on a ticket with Josh French. Young, from Lexington, received less than 2 percent of the vote last year in the Democratic primary for the Sixth Congressional District.

Back last November, the state's Tea Party leaders told Bevin in no uncertain terms to keep Hampton on the ticket, because dumping the state's only elected black statewide officeholder would make Bevin look like more of an asshole than he already is.  For her part, Hampton all but admitted she was going to be dropped from the ticket last week before Bevin made his decision official last Friday.

Bevin remains one of the country's least popular governors, and thankfully Alison Lundergan Grimes passed on the Democratic side, where her baggage plus the weight of her father's long history in the state would have almost certainly spelled doom.

As it is, state AG Andy Beshear and Matt Bevin have been fighting for three years straight anyhow, so at least he has the practice in facing off.  We'll see how the primaries go, but at this point I'd vote for an empty barrel of Woodford Reserve over Matt Bevin.

Besides, it's the coldest day of the year and Matt Bevin is bitching about why many Kentucky schools are closed Wednesday because it hasn't occurred to him that some kids in the state have to walk to school after Bevin gutted already slim school transportation budgets last year and wind chills of -20 below might be bad for students.

The guy deserves to lose.

Lundergan in Trouble Again

Looks like the feds have finally dropped the hammer on both the Lundergans, Dem party boss Jerry and his daughter, current KY Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, over major campaign finance violations.

Longtime Kentucky Democratic operatives Jerry Lundergan and Dale Emmons were indicted by a federal grand jury in Lexington Friday for allegedly making illegal contributions to the 2014 U.S. Senate campaign of Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and then conspiring to cover them up.

Emmons was indicted on six counts and Lundergan was indicted on 10 counts after investigators found they “willingly and knowingly” made corporate contributions of more than $25,000 to Grimes’ campaign and then worked to make false entries in the campaign’s financial records to cover up the contributions.

The indictment alleges that Lundergan and an employee of his company approached campaign consultants and vendors and told them to bill S.R. Holding Co. for work they did for his daughter’s campaign. He then did not seek reimbursement from Grimes’ campaign and only sought partial reimbursement after a grand jury subpoenaed records from Lundergan.

It also alleges that Emmons provided political consulting to the campaign, but billed Lundergan and S.R. Holding instead of the campaign, and was paid with corporate funds. When vendors billed Emmons’ business for campaign services, he was allegedly reimbursed by Lundergan and not the campaign.

The indictment says Lundergan and Emmons concealed the scheme from the campaign, causing them to file false reports with the Federal Elections Commission.

The indictments strike at the heart of the Democratic establishment in Kentucky and raise serious questions about the political future of Lundergan’s daughter, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. Grimes is considering a run for either attorney general or governor in 2019.

Lundergan, 71, has for years led a faction of the Kentucky Democratic Party, taking control of the entire party as its chairman twice: once between June and August of 1988 and again from 2005 to 2007. He later would serve as the architect behind his daughter’s campaigns for secretary of state and U.S. Senate.

Emmons, 66, is a close friend of the Lundergan family and has worked on numerous statewide and legislative campaigns as a political consultant, including Grimes’ 2014 Senate campaign.

At this point the question has to be asked about how much Alison Grimes knew.  And I hate to say it, but compared to Jack Conway and Andy Beshear, Grimes was our best shot at taking down Matt Bevin in 2019.

Bevin jumped into the race last weekend. Before, there was serious speculation as to if he would even bother running earlier in August after this spring's teachers' strike, seeing how unpopular he taking away Medicaid from 10% of the state's population is and how Grimes was in a great position to kick his ass.  She responded yesterday:

Grimes is out with a statement on Facebook: pic.twitter.com/J55rKn1vyk

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 31, 2018

Now that's in the toilet, and I have to say I'm betting Bevin suddenly threw his hat into the ring because he knew this hammer was about to fall.  Kentucky Republicans are already demanding that Grimes all but resign:

.@KYGOP spox calls for Grimes “to recuse herself and her office from any and all election related activities this election cycle and cede control of this fall’s elections to the other 6 members of the State Board of Elections.”

— Joe Sonka 😐 (@joesonka) August 31, 2018

That pressure won't let up, either.  I'm sure Bevin will direct AG Andy Beshear to investigate Grimes well into 2019. Either way, I'm tired of dynastic Democrats losing in this state, and losing for increasingly stupid reasons.  This state can't take another four years of Bevin.  Lives are literally on the line here.

It's infuriating.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

There's very little doubt now that both Republican US senators in my state are deeply involved in the Trump regime's Russia malfeasance, Mitch McConnell because of his role of protecting Trump as GOP Senate majority leader, and Rand Paul as proxy for Russia's powerful oligrarchs in the Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he will ask President Trump this weekend to lift sanctions against top Russian officials so they can visit the United States later this year.

Paul said members of both bodies of Russia's legislature had agreed to come to the United States to continue talks after the GOP senator visited Moscow earlier this month.

"They have both agreed to come to Washington in the fall for further meetings. That's a good thing. The downside is the chairman of each of the committees is banned from coming to the United States because of sanctions," Paul told Fox News's Laura Ingraham. 

He added that to overcome the blockade he will ask the president, when they talk this weekend, to "take people off the list who are in the legislature."

Paul didn't specify who specifically he would ask be removed from U.S. sanctions lists.

But Paul met with Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, during his trip to Moscow. Kosachev was targeted during a new wave of sanctions announced earlier this year.

Paul's trip to Moscow raised eyebrows in Washington, where many of his colleagues have been skeptical of Trump's warmer stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Spokesmen for both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told The Hill last week that they had not invited, and we're not discussing inviting, their Russian counterparts to visit the Capitol.

Kosachev indicated earlier this month that Moscow would be interested in organizing a meeting between members of the Russian legislature and their U.S. counterparts.

Paul and his Ron father have been deep into Russian "useful idiot" damage to the US for years, unlike Trump's overweening greed, for Paul it's ideology.  Even McConnell thinks this is a bad idea, removing sanctions on Russia's legislative leaders, all installed by or members of Putin's circle of oligarchs, is foiling exactly the "hit them in the wallet" damage that Congress insisted on Trump doing.

Rand Paul doing this under the cover of "diplomacy" is atrocious.  Both of my Senators need to go, but neither one is up for reelection this year unfortunately, and KY Dems have all kinds of problems putting together any sort of real challenge anyway (see Conway, Jack, and Grimes, Alison).

Russia has both my senators in their grip.  That terrifies me as an American and as a Kentuckian.

Open Mic Night, Only With Moonshine

If it's the first August Saturday in Kentucky, it's time for Fancy Farm, the Bluegrass State's annual "pretend we're normal people" political speechifying event/open mic night.  It's something that every political hopeful here attends, and this year was no different as human-terrapin hybrid Mitch McConnell announced his intent to run for Senate again in 2020.

Saying it was never too soon to start, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell formally announced his 2020 re-election bid in his home state Saturday and tapped the young leader of the state’s House Republicans as his campaign chairman. 

The 76-year-old McConnell has said for months that he intends to run for re-election in 2020. But he left little room for doubt while speaking at a GOP breakfast in far western Kentucky, the precursor to the Fancy Farm picnic that serves as the traditional starting point for the state’s fall campaign season. 

“I have some news to make this morning. I’m going to be running for re-election in 2020,” McConnell told the crowd at Graves County Middle School, adding: “I don’t like starting late.” 

McConnell chose Jonathan Shell, the 30-year-old majority leader of the Kentucky House of Representatives, as chairman of his campaign. Shell made national news in May when he was ousted in a Republican primary by a high school math teacher who had never run for office before. The election was seen by many as result of massive protests across the country by teachers and public workers upset with education funding, retirement benefits and low pay. 

Hundreds of teachers mustered at the Fancy Farm picnic Saturday. The 138-year-old tradition in western Kentucky is known for pitting politicians of both parties onstage before a crowd of raucous hecklers who do their best to fluster those brave enough to stand at the microphone. Raising the stakes, the speeches are broadcast live on statewide television. 

As McConnell spoke Saturday, hundreds of teachers in matching red T-shirts stood and turned their backs on him as they chanted, “Vote him out!” 

But McConnell was steady, seeming amused by some of the reactions. Near the end of his speech, McConnell addressed the Republican side of the crowd by turning to the Democrats and saying: “Don’t be afraid of these people. Stand up for America and help us make America great again.”

I will admit, anyone who thought Mitch would be bothered by the political pressure he's under never put up with Fancy Farm crowds in a sweltering Kentucky August. Especially in the Trump era of "civility" heckling everyone on stage is free game and absolutely expected, and you're supposed to give as good as you get but you'd better keep it clean.  After all,  this is a church picnic, folks.

But you know who wasn't here?

GOP Gov. Matt Bevin.

Couldn't stand the heat, I guess.  Next year should be real interesting.

It's About Suppression, Con't.

OK folks, as if I haven't stressed this enough over the last almost nine years, now is way past the time to be worrying about Trump's point man on national voter suppression efforts, our old friend Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has asked the state of Connecticut to provide President Donald Trump’s new voter commission with the names, birthdates and Social Security information for that state’s voters going back to 2006. 

Kobach, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and a candidate for Kansas governor in 2018, serves as vice chairman of Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. 

In a June 28 letter, Kobach asked the Connecticut secretary of state’s office to provide it with all publicly available voter roll data, including the full names of all registered voters along with their addresses, dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, voting history and other personal information. 

Kobach’s office did not immediately answer a question about how many states received similar letters. Kobach previously promised that the commission would undertake the most comprehensive study of voter fraud to date. 

Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, a Democrat, said in a statement that her office plans to share “publicly-available information with the Kobach Commission while ensuring that the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data.”

“In the same spirit of transparency, we will request that the Commission share any memos, meeting minutes or additional information as state officials have not been told precisely what the Commission is looking for,” she said. “This lack of openness is all the more concerning, considering that the Vice Chair of the Commission, Kris Kobach, has a lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas.” 

Kobach has championed some of the strictest voting laws in the country during his tenure as secretary of state. Those laws have spurred multiple lawsuits.
Last week, a federal judge fined him $1,000 for making “patently misleading representations” about documents he took to a November meeting with Trump that relate to federal voting law as part of an ongoing voting rights case. 

“The courts have repudiated his methods on multiple occasions but often after the damage has been done to voters,” Merrill said. “Given Secretary Kobach’s history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this Commission.” 

Vanita Gupta, the former head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s office of Civil Rights, said on Twitter that the letter proves that Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence, who serves as the commission’s chairman, “are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple.” 

Kobach’s office denied a request by The Kansas City Star for documents related to the commission last week on the grounds that his office has no documents pertaining to the commission.

Vanita Gupta is right, and Connecticut is not the only state who got this letter demanding voter information for the last ten years.  All 50 states have been asked to do this.  At least three have said no, including to her considerable credit, Kentucky's Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said in a statement that he has “no intention” of fulfilling the request, defending the fairness of his state's elections. He also blasted the commission in his statement, saying it was based on the "false notion" of widespread voter fraud in the November presidential election.

“At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression,” McAuliffe stated. 

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) also responded to the request, saying “I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally” in the last election.

“California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, Vice President, and [Kansas Secretary of State Kris] Kobach,” Padilla stated. 

Kobach is the vice chairman of the voter fraud panel who asked each state for its voter rolls. 

Later in the evening, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) said she too wouldn't offer up the information requested by the panel. 

"The president created his election commission based on the false notion that "voter fraud" is a widespread issue – it is not," Grimes said in a statement Thursday. 

"Indeed, despite bipartisan objections and a lack of authority, the President has repeatedly spread the lie that three to five million illegal votes were cast in the last election," her statement continued. "Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country."

And the only reason you would force states to do this is if your "solution" to the issue of "voter fraud" was a "national voter integrity database" ahead of national voter ID legislation that would standardize voting and registration procedures across the country for federal elections.

Keep in mind too that Trump would then have a database of every voter in the country and how they voted for the last ten years.  You can imagine the awesome levels of malfeasance that could occur in the annals of targeting voter disenfranchisement with that type of information.

You can also imagine that there would be no independent oversight of the commission and the conclusions they would draw, which of course would be that America desperately needs "voter registration and identification reform legislation" ahead of 2020...or maybe ahead of 2018.

This is where we lose our two-party system, guys, right here.  Republicans vote, Democrats are mysteriously purged from the rolls, just enough to give Republicans key wins in key locations time and time again.  You don't have to touch a single voting machine in the country to control the outcome if you already know who can and cannot vote in each precinct in America.

Even if you don't believe that Trump got help from this from the Russians the first time around, you'd better believe Kobach is going to push for this to happen by 2020.  Keep a really close eye on this one guys, because your democracy is going to go poof before you know it.

A Grand (Jury) Ol' Time In Kentucky

And in more awesome news for the Kentucky Democratic Party, it looks like the Feds would like to have a little talk with Alison Lundergan Grimes about her campaign finances.

A federal grand jury in Lexington has subpoenaed records of Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and her father Jerry Lundergan in an investigation that relates to the finances of her political campaigns in 2014 and 2015.

David Guarnieri, an attorney for Grimes, confirmed Monday that she received the subpoena last week. He said Grimes is not a target of the inquiry and said she is fully responding to the subpoena.

“Secretary Grimes has received a request from the U.S. Attorney’s Office to provide certain documents from her Senate and Secretary of State campaigns,” Guarnieri and his associate Jaron Blandford said in a statement. “Secretary Grimes intends to cooperate fully with respect to this request.”

Guarnieri and Blandford said, “This information is being requested of her because she was the candidate in those campaigns.”

Lundergan, reached on his cell phone Monday, said, "I have no comment about any of that stuff, OK."

Guthrie True, his attorney, said Monday that a federal grand jury subpoenaed records of Lundergan and two of his companies. “There’s nothing that would indicate that either he or his companies are in any way the subjects of any inquiry. So we’re intending to provide documents in response to the subpoenas in a timely fashion,” True said. “But no one has shared with me the specifics of whatever inquiry is being conducted or who may be the subject of that inquiry.”

Lundergan was deeply involved in his daughter's 2014 campaign against U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and used his companies to provide more than $60,000 worth of services to the campaign. After Lundergan was complimented for his daughter's campaign roll-out at a historic home owned by one of his businesses, he said, "That's what daddies do for their little girls."

Kyle Edelen, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Lexington, said, "Per Department of Justice Media Policy - I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

Yeah, well, the feds never convene a grand jury unless they think somebody needs to go to prison, and Jerry Lundergan has been playing fast and loose for 25 years.  You can bet that if Jerry's involved, whatever happened is Good Ol' Boy backroom nonsense that the Feds want to know about.

And election was barely 3 months ago.  If the US Attorney's office is moving this quickly on a grand jury, then this has been cooking for a while now.

We'll see how this goes, but man. Can Grimes be any more of a massive disappointment?

Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

Gov. Matt Bevin's plan to flip the state 100% red like neighboring Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri is proceeding apace, with the Governor having already gotten rid of two Kentucky House Democrats with new appointments to his cabinet and knocking the Democratic lead down to 50-46, he's now calling special elections for the seats in just nine weeks.

Gov. Matt Bevin has set March 8 as the date for critical special elections to fill four vacancies in the Kentucky House of Representatives. 

Those elections could tip the balance of power in the House, which will stand at 50 Democrats and 46 Republicans when the General Assembly convenes on Tuesday. 

During an impromptu news conference Monday at the Capitol, the Republican governor also said he plans to campaign hard in those elections to elect candidates who share his views. 

"I want conservative people. I want people in those seats that will represent the people of Kentucky. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that the people who I think embody the values that I was elected to represent are elected. I do think they'll be Republicans," Bevin said. 

Two of the four vacant House seats were caused by resignations of Democrats John Tilley, of Hopkinsville, and Tanya Pullin, of South Shore, who resigned to accept appointments from Bevin. The other two seats were made vacant by the resignations of two Republicans to accept jobs to which they were elected in November: Ryan Quarles, of Georgetown, who was elected agriculture commissioner, and Mike Harmon, of Danville who was elected auditor. 

In addition, two House Democrats - Jim Gooch of Providence and Denny Butler, of Louisville - switched to the Republican Party last month. 

"I think the tide is turning; the tide has already turned in some measure," Bevin said of the growing GOP numbers in the House. "And I think that's going to become increasingly evident in the days, weeks and years ahead."

A 50-50 tie in the Kentucky House would be something of a disaster, as there's no clear law as to who would be in control of the assembly.  It's entirely possible another legislator could flip parties to break the deadlock, but Bevin's made it clear that Democrats no longer have a place in the state. He's apparently drafted the state's most powerful Republican to help, too.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, after privately meeting Wednesday morning with Gov. Matt Bevin, said it’s inevitable that the Kentucky House will flip to Republican control and that he is working to make sure it happens. 

McConnell, a Louisville Republican, said he is working with state Rep. Jonathan Shell, R-Lancaster, to recruit Republican candidates for the four special House elections Bevin has called for March 8 to fill vacancies and for this year’s regular House elections, in which all 100 seats will be contested. 

Democrats now control the House with a 50-46 margin. If Republicans win all four House special elections, the political party makeup in the chamber will be an even 50-50. 

That has never happened before in Kentucky history, and Republicans are trying to wrest control of the state House for the first time since 1921. Republicans now control the state Senate and governor’s office. 

Both McConnell and Bevin said it is a matter of time before Republicans control the House. Bevin said he expects it to happen this year.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article53290090.html#storylink=cpy

We'll see where it goes, but Bevin doesn't seem to be wasting any time in turning Kentucky into another basement dwelling Southern red state.  And in case of a 50-50 tie in the House, Bevin is already laying down markers that he's the decider.

Ironically, Alison Lundergan Grimes is still Secretary of State, and Steve Beshear's son Andy is now state AG, so we'll see how they weigh in.  I'm hoping they do, and soon.

Online And On Point

I know I've given Alison Lundergan Grimes a deservedly hard time for being a terrible Senate candidate and losing to Mitch the Turtle by 16 points, but she's still Secretary of State and in charge of running elections, and on-line voting registration for Kentucky is a big, big deal.

Kentuckians will be able to register to vote online, possibly in time for the next presidential election, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announced Tuesday. 

Standing outside the League of Women Voters’ Louisville office, Grimes touted the “transformational change” as a way to generate more registered voters in the state. Grimes said funds for the project are available through the federal Help America Vote Act, and her office estimated the program’s cost at $45,000. 

Grimes said the initiative has support from past Kentucky secretaries of state, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration and the Republican National Lawyers Association. Twenty-three states currently offer online voter registration, and five others and the District of Columbia have passed such measures but have not yet implemented them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

This is again, a big deal here and Grimes gets a lot of credit.  Easy, on-line voting registration will be too late to help for the state races this year, but could play a part in turnout for 2016's Presidential, Senate, and House contests here.

Kentucky’s move toward an online voter registration system comes after a similar measure, House Bill 214, failed to get a Senate committee vote in this year’s session. HB 214 cleared the House on a 92-3 vote. 

The Kentucky State Board of Elections, which Grimes chairs, crafted an administrative regulation enacting an online voter registration portal, which cleared the Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee on a 4-3 vote in July, according to a report by the Lexington Herald-Leader. 

“We actually made sure in the event our General Assembly stalled as sometimes they often do, we were prepared,” Grimes said. “This is an initiative that the voters of Kentucky are demanding, and it’s made its way through the administrative regulation process, now effective law. Kentucky can’t wait any longer. We’re finally entering the 21st century as it relates to election administration thanks to the diligence and hard work of my staff and the State Board of Elections.”

The one downside is that should Grimes lose to Republican Steve Knipper in November, I'm betting Knipper will immediately shelve the project.  Republicans don't want more people voting, ever.  They lose when that happens, and even Kentucky Republicans are smart enough to know that.

Something that makes it easier to vote?  No way.

Last Call For Clinton Kentucky

I've been holding out hope that Hillary Clinton could win here in Kentucky in 2016 and help beat Rand Paul, but the other half of that Public Policy Polling survey on Kentucky shows that Kentucky Democrats are mostly Reagan Democrats, and Clinton will have an extremely tough battle here.

On the Democratic side Clinton is ever dominant, getting 56% to 12% for Bernie Sanders, 7% for Jim Webb, 5% for Lincoln Chafee, and 3% for Martin O'Malley. Clinton is over 80% with African Americans, 70% with liberals, 60% with younger voters, and 50% with moderates, women, men, whites, and seniors. The only group she fails to get a majority with is the swath of Kentucky Democrats who are conservatives and don't tend to vote Democratic in national elections despite their registration.

Clinton doesn't have much of a chance in the general election in the state outside of ending up running against Trump though. Paul (50/40) and Huckabee (49/39) fare the best against Clinton with 10 point leads. Carson has a 9 point lead at 49/40 and Bush's is 8 points at 48/40. Holding more modest leads over Clinton are Cruz with a 6 point one at 48/42, and Walker (46/41), Rubio (46/41), and Fiorina (45/40) each with a 5 point advantage.

But before you go believing that it's Clinton they dislike, understand that any of the other Democratic hopefuls fare even worse here in the Bluegrass State.

Clinton may not do great in Kentucky but it's really bad for any of the other Democratic hopefuls. Scott Walker would lead Sanders 42/29, O'Malley 40/22, Chafee 41/23, and Webb 42/22. Obviously that has a lot to do with name recognition but it's still somewhat jarring to see potential Democratic candidates polling in the low 20s for the general election in any state.

So Clinton would lose by 5-10 points here and any other Dem would lose by double digits.  It's not looking good here for Team Blue.  Yes, it's 16 months out and anything could happen, but I'm thinking the Clinton campaign isn't going to be making very many visits here.

Ask Alison Grimes how much Hillary was able to help last year.

Alison's Split Decision

As you may have heard, my hairpiece of a junior senator Rand Paul may be playing for the White House in 2016. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Oval Office for ol’ Rand. Kentucky law says that a candidate’s name can’t appear twice on the same ballot for different races, so Rand either has to run for Senator or for President, but not both. Rand and the KY GOP want to change that law or even go around it. But any election law business has to go through Kentucky’s current Secretary of State.

You know, Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Six weeks after she lost her own bid for the U-S Senate, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (R-Kentucky) tells WHAS11 if U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) tries to appear on the same ballot for both Senate and President in 2016, she will challenge him in court. 

“The law is clear,” Grimes said. “You can’t be on the ballot twice for two offices.” 

Kentucky Democrats are not cooperating as Paul considers mounting simultaneous campaigns for Senate and President. Democrats maintained control of the Kentucky House in last month’s election, a roadblock to legislation favored by the Republican Senate to remove the prohibition. House Speaker Greg Stumbo (D-Prestonsburg) declined to consider a Senate bill to that effect earlier this year. 

Paul may challenge the law in court as the Republican Party of Kentucky also discusses whether to hold a presidential caucus rather than a primary, which would allow Paul to follow the letter of the law by not appearing on the primary ballot, twice. 

“We haven’t made a final decision one way or another,” Paul told WHAS11 last month, “other than I have decided I am going to run for reelection for the US Senate.” 

Grimes was asked about the potential battle after a meeting at Kentucky’s Board of Elections on Tuesday. 

“I will not be bullied,” Grimes said. “I think hopefully the people of Kentucky understand that over the course of this past year, and I will not hesitate to seek help and assistance in the opinion of a court.” 

Pressed whether she would also seek an opinion from Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D), who lost to Paul in the 2010 Senate race, Grimes reiterated that she would rely on the courts. 

“We’ll look to the court for any guidance that is needed,” Grimes said. “And at the end of the day, we’re not going to be bullied. I’ve done my job as Secretary of State for the people of Kentucky and I’ll continue to do that.”

Some background on politics here:

Republicans control Kentucky’s state Senate, Democrats control Kentucky’s state House. Odds are good there’s going to be a Senate bill reversing the law, but it will have to get past the House and Kentucky’s ambitious House Speaker, Greg Stumbo. If it does, Kentucky’s gubernatorial election becomes key in 2015, when Democrat “Dinosaur” Steve Beshear (he of the tax credits for the Ark Encounter park, recently reversed) hangs it up after his second term. (Kentucky’s off-off year election for Governor is how state officials get around the election law locally when running for that office, the other state offices are during presidential election years.) Beshear’s running mate Jerry Abramson recently left the Lt. Governor’s office to be the Obama administration’s point man on local governments. Beshear called informer State Auditor Crit Luallen to finish up Abramson’s term, but she’s not going to run for Governor. Republican and current Ag Commissioner James Comer is already in for the GOP, versus Democrat and current Attorney General Jack Conway and it’s possible that if Comer wins, he can push to overturn the law in time for Rand to run in 2016. If Conway wins, he can veto it if needed.

Whew.

So, having said all that, I’m thinking that all this theater may be Alison’s opening act, but not for a run at Frankfort. Sticking it to Rand is a good way to get noticed by the Village, after all. And if Rand jumps in the clown carpool and the law still stands, suddenly his Senate seat is a open race in 2016. Conway, Grimes, maybe even Luallen might take a shot at it. On the GOP side, if Comer loses in 2015 I’m betting he’d be in, and lurking around the corner is Libertarian spoiler David Patterson, who got 3% in November’s race.

Either way, next year should be pretty exciting around the Bluegrass State.

Um, we apologize in advance for how this will probably find a way to mess up America in the process. Sorry.

Your Sunday Long Read

This week's Sunday Long Read is Joe Sonka's postmortem on the Grimes campaign, and how she lost by 16 points in the space of only a couple of weeks.

But at the very least, Grimes had an opportunity to make Tuesday’s election competitive, and the overarching reason she didn’t give herself that chance was the hermetically sealed bubble in which Grimes’ intellect and personality was locked by her campaign. Her campaign repeatedly touted how “disciplined” she was, never going off script and saying something that could end up in an attack ad. Some extent of discipline is needed for any campaign, but they took this to an extreme that ended up defining her as a candidate and left many wondering who she was, what she believed, and whether she was up for the job. And any young, relatively unknown candidate presenting herself as a mostly blank slate is especially vulnerable.

Do read the whole thing.   If you want to know exactly how Kentucky Democrats blew the best chance they ever had to unseat Mitch the Turtle, well, this is the best article I've read of its epitaph.  Grimes's refusal to say if she voted for Obama or not pretty much turned a six-point loss into a sixteen-point one.

And the best part is we get to go through all of this next year here as Gov. Dinosaur Steve's job is up for grabs in 2015 between Dem AG Jack Conway and GOP Ag Secretary James Comer.

Last Call For Anti-Social Turtles

Greg Sargent notes that Alison Grimes is on the attack in the final week of the Kentucky Senate campaign, hitting Mitch McConnell hard on supporting Dubya's Social Security privatization scheme in 2005.

The other day, the Dem-aligned Senate Majority PAC made a splash by going up in Kentucky with a very harsh ad hitting Mitch McConnell over his previous support for Social Security privatization. The ad linked that stance to an assertion that McConnell had “rearranged his portfolio” after private calls with a top Treasury Department official, implicitly suggesting McConnell had milked inside connections to bolster his own retirement security while gambling with that of others. 

The ad ticked off the McConnell campaign, which circulated a fact check that said it had oversimplified the claims in the original article on which it was based and overlooked the fact that it had alleged no wrongdoing. 

The McConnell campaign is trying to get TV stations to stop running the ad. I’ve checked in with Kentucky stations, and most declined to reveal their plans for the spot, though an official at one — Fox affiliate WDRB — told me: “We reinstated the spot, finding the assertions factual.” 

A spokesman for Senate Majority PAC told me the ad is still airing “on every station we bought on.” 

The dust-up shows that Democrats are pushing hard to make Social Security privatization a sleeper issue in the last days of the Kentucky Senate race. And they were handed an unexpected opening in this regard, when McConnell himself made an offhand reference to his own involvement with George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization efforts in 2005. “He wanted us to try to fix Social Security,” McConnell said during a recent speech. “I spent a year trying to get any Democrat in the Senate…to help us.”

You know, now that I think about it, that's part of the reason why Republicans hate Obamacare so much.  Obama was able to get his major domestic policy program passed into law, whereas both of Dubya's major pushes to privatize Social Security and to reform immigration ended up so unpopular among Republicans that they couldn't pass either even with control of Congress.

I have no idea why Mitch is bringing this up again, especially here in a state like Kentucky, but hey, he's Mitch.  Between lying about no wanting to kill Medicaid expansion by repealing Obamacare "root and branch" and now this Social Security scam, I think he might have done critical damage to his own campaign here in the final days.

Also, whining about taking a tough ad off the air?  Please.

Turn Out For What, NKY?

County clerks here in Northern Kentucky aren't expecting heavy turnout next week.  Despite 2010 numbers that showed turnout of 41% in Boone and Kenton Counties, and 48% in Campbell County (with a statewide turnout of 49%) the numbers are expected to be lower here in 2014.

Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown said turnout in the county will range from 35 to 40 percent. 

"The majority of people only vote every four years," Brown said in a reference to presidential voting.

That's not good.

Campbell County Clerk Jack Snodgrass said turnout in Campbell County could be between 35 and 38 percent. 

"The reason I think it's going to be strong is we have so many city races that are hotly contested," Snodgrass said. 

Bellevue, Dayton, Fort Thomas, Highland Heights, Cold Spring and Alexandria – especially for the mayor – will bring out voters, he said. 

Competition for a U.S. Senate seat between Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes will likely bring out many people who haven't voted much in the past, Snodgrass said.

Wait, how is that strong when it's down from the 2010 numbers?  I would have to think Grimes would have a real shot if statewide turnout was 49% or higher, but if clerks are expecting worse number than 2010, then it really is going to come down to who shows up on November 4.

I'll be there for sure.

Last Call For Big Endorsements

As they did in 2010 with Jack Conway, both the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader have endorsed the Democrat for US Senate. Alison Grimes has earned the praise of both papers, and in a race this tight, it may make a difference.

The Courier-Journal:

Grimes, to her credit, was willing to appear before this newspaper’s editorial board, fielding an hour’s worth of questions in an interview that was streamed live online and remains archived on the C-J website. She did this fully aware that Mr. McConnell’s campaign could-- and did-- seize on snippets to use in political attacks. 

Mr. McConnell, in turn, never accepted a similar invitation dating back to early September to appear before the C-J editorial board, thus shielding himself from scrutiny as well as any potential for attack ads based on his responses. Kentuckians should take measure of that: Thirty years in the Senate, and no comment.

More discouraging-- and most important to voters-- is that he appears lacking a vision for Kentucky or the country as a whole. Rather, his decades-long drive to increase his power and political standing has resulted in this campaign based on his boast that if he is re-elected and Republicans win a Senate majority, he would become Senate majority leader. Some voters believe Kentucky will benefit from keeping Mr. McConnell in such a national leadership position, but we believe that alone is not a reason for giving him another term. 

Both candidates have failed the voters through limited access, rote talking points, slickly packaged appearances and a barrage of attack ads that at best are misleading and at worst, outright false. 

But Ms. Grimes has laid out positions on a number of issues that matter to voters, ones that separate her from her opponent.

The Herald-Leader:

McConnell has sabotaged jobs and transportation bills, even as Kentucky's unemployment exceeds the nation's and an Interstate 75 bridge crumbles over the Ohio River. He blocked tax credits for companies that move jobs back to this country while preserving breaks for those that move jobs overseas. He opposed extending unemployment benefits, while bemoaning the "jobless" recovery. He brags about resolving crises that he helped create. 

The Senate may never recover from the bitter paralysis McConnell has inflicted through record filibusters that allow his minority to rule by obstruction. 

Even before Barack Obama was sworn in, McConnell told his fellow Republicans that their strategy was to deny the new president any big wins. The country was in two wars and at deep risk of sliding into a depression, but making an adversary look bad was McConnell's main mission. 

His signature cause-- flooding elections with ever more money-- corrupts. He poses as a champion of the right to criticize the government, but it's really his rich buddies' right to buy the government that he champions. 

If McConnell had a better record, he would not have to argue for six more years by obsessively linking Grimes to Obama, who will be gone in two years no matter what.

It's good to see these papers tell the truth about McConnell.  His time is passed and he's just embarrassing now.

Sure, He's A Turtle, But He's Our Turtle!

It's saying something that in Kentucky, where African-Americans make up only about 8% of the population (well under the national average of 13% and waaaaaay under other Southern states like Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia) that the Senate race here is close enough for Mitch McConnell to even care about the black vote.

As such, Mitch McConnell's pitch to black voters like myself here in Kentucky is really simple:  As Senate majority leader, I'll get you the green.

As the latest Bluegrass Poll poll shows, the Kentucky Senate race remains tight between GOP leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and the campaigns are battling for every last vote in the home stretch. 

McConnell goes on the radio Tuesday in an ad targeting African-American voters following a negative ad aired on Louisville-area radio last week that criticized the minority leader on voting rights. In his response ad, McConnell again leans on Noelle Hunter, an African-American woman and community college professor, to make the case for his re-election. 

“Alison Grimes won’t say she voted for President Obama, but I will. I voted for President Obama — twice. So you might be surprised to hear that I’m also voting for Mitch McConnell,” Hunter says in the ad.. “As an African American I know from personal experience that Mitch fights for our community and cares about us.”

Vote for Mitch.  He has black friends, unlike that mean ol' white girl who hates President Obama.

Of course the reason Mitch is deigning to admit the black vote exists in the first place is because Alison Grimes knows damn well what Republicans really mean for the black vote.

The Grimes campaign is seeking to motivate black voters with a radio ad suggesting their voting rights are at risk if McConnell is re-elected. “Worst of all, Mitch McConnell has been leading the Republican effort to take away our voting rights,” the man says in the Grimes ad. “Just like he blocked everything from getting done in Washington, he’s blocking the ballot box and trying to silence our voices.”

Still, Grimes attacking Obama has hurt her among black voters.

The latest Bluegrass Poll gives Grimes a 38-point lead, 60%-22%, among black voters, with 17% undecided two weeks from Election Day.

You'd be hard pressed to find any other Republicans running this year who's getting 22% of the black vote.  In a state like Alabama, that would be a landslide GOP win.  In Kentucky, well, that's more like 2% of the total vote, but in a race that will probably be decided by a couple of points, the margin may be enough.

We'll see.

Meet The Glibertarian Here In Kentucky

I haven't talked too much about David Patterson, the Libertarian candidate here in Kentucky's Senate race between Mitch McConnell and Alison Grimes, but he may end up a major factor anyway, as TPM's Sahil Kapur points out.

Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate David Patterson clocks in at 3 percent in the latest Bluegrass Poll, which may be enough to tilt the potentially decisive — and hotly contested — Kentucky race between Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) and Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), who are 2 points apart.

Patterson is hardly a seasoned politician: He lacks the killer instinct to seamlessly rip into his opponents and he freely admits when he doesn't have an answer to a question. He wants to end the drug war, legalize marijuana and let same-sex couples marry ("love is love," he says); he wants to get rid of Obamacare, the Patriot Act, the NSA's spying program and the income tax.

"My message is freedom," Patterson told TPM in an interview on Thursday, vowing to impose a two-term limit on himself if elected — "and that's if my wife lets me run for a second term. She may not."

"The NSA, Patriot Act — there's a whole lot of very, very heavy legislation that has come down in the name of the war on terror. Many citizens may not see it, but I certainly do. And it very much bothers me that the U.S. government can hold and detain a U.S. citizen indefinitely without trial and without charge," Patterson said. "The majority of both parties are interventionists. They like going into other countries. They both enjoy spending money — our money."

Don't get me wrong, I like some of his positions.  But the majority of them are terrible for Kentucky and his rhetoric on those areas are indistinguishable from Mitch:

Asked what he'd do about the roughly half-a-million Kentuckians who would lose insurance coverage if he repeals Obamacare, Patterson said, "Obviously we'd need to put something in place to help those individuals until such time as we can determine how we're going to — once again, I don't have all the answers. But we have to have something set up to assist them."

Like what?  Well, "something".  Some sort of big government approach I guess, right?  Well, who's going to pay for that "something" if you get rid of Kentucky's income tax?  And note he's fine with getting rid of income tax, not sales tax.  He'd send us down the same road as Sam Brownback in Kansas, only as a US Senator he'd push for that everywhere.  You figure there's about what, $2 trillion or so in federal and state revenue from income tax?  If that goes away, we'll have to do what, cut $2 trillion in spending yearly?  Sure, that'll add up.

Patterson claims that if he siphons votes from either McConnell or Grimes, he'd do so "kind of equally" from both. But the surveys tell a different story. According to the Bluegrass Poll, Patterson's support comes mostly from independents, but he has five times as much support from self-identified Republicans than Democrats, and more support among conservatives than liberals. That suggests that Patterson is likelier, if anything, to take votes from McConnell.

So yeah, he may actually help give Grimes the win.  That'll be his lasting legacy, and not his horrendously stupid policies.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda For Grimes

Over at TNR, Alec MacGillis argues that Alison Lundergan Grimes would be winning if she had mentioned the success of Kynect in the state, and yes, she does apparently take into account the same NY Times article that I pointed out was evidence that here in Kentucky, people will never give Obama credit for anything.

No doubt, there are many GOP-inclined voters like Ms. Evans among the several hundred thousand Kentuckians who have obtained coverage under Obamacare. Their existence, and quotes like this, only confirm one of the most popular conceptions of red state politics in the minds of blue state liberals: the “What’s the Matter with Kansas” notion that lower- and middle-class white voters in these states are voting Republican even though their economic interests are far better represented by Democrats. How else to explain that a state like Kentucky could be benefitting so much from the law and yet be leaning Republican?

But this likely takeaway from the piece—like the "What's the Matter with Kansas" thesis more broadly—may oversimplify things. For starters, my strong hunch from my own reporting in the region over the past couple years—including several trips to Kentucky for a new book on McConnell—is that the Democrats’ biggest problem in Appalachia and the Upland South is not that the people who are benefitting from Obamacare or would stand to benefit from it if their states fully implemented the law are voting against their own interests, for Republicans. It is that many of those people are not voting at all.

Well, I agree with her on that part at least.  I certainly don't expect turnout here in Kentucky to be more than 40%.

No, the bigger problem for Democrats in Kentucky is the second one I identified at that free medical clinic, the political disconnect of the low-income population that stands to benefit most from the law. And this is where the scrutiny really needs to shift away from the voters and to the candidate. Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign has made the decision to talk about Obamacare as little as possible, even though the law has had a bigger impact and better implementation in Kentucky than just about anywhere in the country, thanks to the staunch backing of Governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat. Her campaign is avoiding the issue despite the fact that McConnell is so aware of his vulnerability on it—vowing to repeal a law that has provided coverage to hundreds of thousands in his state—that he has wound himself into comical pretzels to obscure the ramifications of his stance, claiming at points that “kynect” could survive even if Obamacare is repealed. The Grimes campaign briefly pounced on this blatant disingenuousness, but has not been nearly as aggressive pressing the point as it could have been.

Evidently, the Grimes camp worries that talking about Obamacare’s benefits for Kentucky necessarily yokes her closer to the law’s namesake, who is not popular in the state and who is constantly named in the barrage of ads that have been attacking Obamacare, virtually unchallenged, across Kentucky. They assume that talking up the law will inevitably backfire with the likes of Robin Evans. But deeply anti-Obama voters like Evans are likely a lost cause for Grimes regardless. What her campaign could dearly use is higher turnout from Democratic-inclined voters who, like many Kentuckians, have a low opinion of McConnell and who haven’t voted in the past but might just be prompted to do so with a strong pitch for the benefits of “kynect.” Grimes, to her credit, has tried to reach out to such disconnected, downscale voters with a sustained message in favor of raising the minimum wage. But why not strengthen that "I'm with the little guy" appeal even further with a forthright pro-kynect message that both appeals to self interest and highlights McConnell’s double-talk on health care?

Because of the shame factor.  People in Kentucky and especially Coal Country are literally dirt-poor.  They have been for some time, and some of the poorest counties in the state are also the most Republican when it comes to turning out.  These are folks who are proud and sick of the fact they need help.  Giving them more help is one thing.  Having them take the help is also another.  But having them be grateful enough for the help to vote for a black President's proxy?

Nope. It's easy to blame Grimes here.  The real problem is social, cultural, and racial.

Yeah, Grimes has run a bad campaign and I've said as such.  The fact that she's within 4 or 5 points speaks volumes as to just how sick people are of Mitch McConnell screwing them over.  But Rand Paul better watch out when he faces voters again in 2016 once Obama is out of office.

Last Call For Alison's Firing Line

Alison Lundergan Grimes's newest ad doesn't pull any punches as the sheet-shooting candidate takes potshots at Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell.  Joe Arnold:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes fires a shotgun six times in a new television ad, each shot aiming to poke a hole in the campaign of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. 

Most significantly, Grimes leaves no room for interpretation that she disagrees with McConnell's assertion that a vote for her is a vote to further the agenda of the Obama administration. 

"Mitch McConnell wants you to think I'm Barack Obama," Grimes' voice is heard as she fires a shotgun to begin the ad. 

"I'm not Barack Obama," Grimes says later. "I disagree with him on guns, coal and the EPA," Grimes says, turning toward the camera after firing the shotgun, her safety glasses and ear plugs intact. 

It's not like Mitch has left her much of a choice.  This is Kentucky, as I keep saying, and the only way Grimes is going to win is to run against Obama as much as she is running against Mitch.  His latest ad ends with the tagline "Obama needs Grimes, Kentucky needs Mitch."  But Grimes takes her shots at ol' Turtle Face too.

Grimes also uses the shotgun blasts to target a mix of McConnell campaign flubs and arguments against her. 

"This is the same guy who thought Duke basketball players were U-K," Grimes says, referring to a flub by McConnell's ad maker in a March web video which showed Duke University players celebrating the 2010 NCAA basketball championship rather than an intended University of Kentucky highlight. The clip lasts less than one second, but has become frequent fodder for Grimes. 

"... or who's attacking me on coal," Grimes continues, " after doing nothing while we've lost thousands of coal jobs." 

"He even said it's not his job to bring jobs to Kentucky," Grimes intones, repeating a quote McConnell insists was taken out of context but a Beattyville newspaper editor says was reported accurately.

The end of the ad seeks to undermine what the McConnell campaign has used as imagery in its favor, McConnell holding a shotgun over his head at the Conservative Political Action Conference before presenting it to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R).
"And, Mitch," Grimes laughs, "That's not how you hold a gun."

Chuckle all you want.  That works in the Bluegrass State.  It's a good ad, for a bad situation, to get rid of an awful incumbent.  If this gets Mitch out of the Senate, Grimes can disagree with President Obama on some issues.  Better than trying to actively block him on all issues.