McConnell won't reveal plan for Social Security, loans campaign $1.8 million; absentee votes up over 2010

Another rolling roundup as we go through the weekend . . .

• Insider Louisville's Joe Sonka reports on Sen. Mitch McConnell's Thursday speech to the Louisville Rotary Club: "Though he hasn’t mentioned it much on the campaign trail over the past year, McConnell specifically touted his effort to push President George W. Bush’s plans to reform Social Security in 2005, which would have set up private accounts for retirees. . . . Insider Louisville asked McConnell after the event if he would make a push for such reforms to Social Security if he was elected Senate majority leader and could set the agenda, but he declined to reveal if he would do so. 'I’m not announcing what the agenda would be in advance,' said McConnell. 'We’re not in the majority yet. We’ll have more to say about that later,' assumedly meaning at some point after the election in 12 days. Both McConnell and his opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes have accused each other of hiding the true agenda they would advocate for if elected. McConnell claims Grimes is hiding her support of President Obama’s policies in order to fool voters . . . At a Louisville retirement community earlier this week, Grimes and Congressman John Yarmuth told the seniors gathered that McConnell would push not only to privatize Medicare for future retirees, but start another push for Social Security privatization."
• The Lexington Herald-Leader has two good stories on the race today: from Sam Youngman on McConnell, the Tea Party and 4th District Rep. Thomas Massie; and from Sean Cockerham on how McConnell might handle the job of Senate majority leader.
• Renee Shaw of KET did a report for PBS NewsHour on the influence of Obamacare on the race, with strongly contrasting views from both sides.
• "In the most competitive U.S. Senate races this year, big-money special interests that proliferated after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision are routinely out-muscling and out-messaging the candidates themselves," Michael Beckel of The Center for Public Integrity reports Here are its charts, with the Kentucky race numbers:
  
  
  
• McConnell is loaning his campaign $1.8 million. A campaign spokesman told Manu Raju of Politico that he is doing so in order to keep his promise to not draw assistance from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, after its Democratic counterpart and Democratic Leader Harry Reid's Senate Majority PAC resumed television advertising in the race.
• "More people are voting absentee in Kentucky's Nov. 4 general election, a sign the state's closely watched Senate race could be boosting turnout," The Associated Press reports. "The State Board of Elections said 11,089 people have already cast absentee ballots in person at their local county clerk's office as of Monday morning. That's about 2,000 more votes than were cast at this time in 2010, the last time Kentucky had a U.S. Senate race on the ballot. . . .
  Another 7,714 voters have cast absentee ballots by mail, bringing the total to more than 18,100 votes cast so far."
• "The Fix" column of The Washington Post recently called the race the nation's most interesting, but that didn't get it off the bottom of its list of 13 seats that could change parties.
• The Faith and Freedom Coalition, the religious-conservative successor to the Christian Coalition, has mailed its voter guide for the race:
  
  

McConnell 47%, Grimes 45% in latest Bluegrass Poll

Sen. Mitch McConnell leads Alison Lundergan Grimes by two percentage points in the latest Bluegrass Poll conducted for major Kentucky newspapers and television stations.

McConnell had 47 percent and Grimes 45 percent in the digital telephone poll taken July 18-23 by Survey USA for The Courier-Journal, the Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville's WHAS-TV and Lexington's WKYT-TV. The poll surveyed 800 self-defined likely voters and has an error margin of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, which applies to each candidate's percentage.

One in four polled say they might change their mind before voting, and 8 percent said they were undecided. The undecided percentage rose to 13 when the questionnaire included David Patterson, a gun-toting Harrodsburg police officer who is collecting petition signatures to appear on the ballot as the candidate of the Libertarian Party. He has until Aug. 12 to file 5,000 qualified signatures. With three candidates in the mix, the results were McConnell 41, Grimes 39 and Patterson 7.

"While obviously a very tight race, it's a shift in McConnell's direction," WKYT's Bill Bryant said. WHAS's Joe Arnold noted, "It's McConnell's first lead this year" in the survey. "In the February poll, Grimes was up by four percentage points; in May, Grimes led by one. . . . McConnell appears to be drawing his strength from two key demographic groups, senior citizens and Eastern Kentuckians." (Lexington Herald-Leader chart)

McConnell has been emphasizing his support for the coal industry, in opposition to carbon-dioxide limits proposed by President Obama, who was already unpopular in Eastern Kentucky. In major eastern coal counties in the May 18 Democratic primary, token candidates got double-digit percentages, indicating unhappiness with the Democrats. The poll found McConnell leading in Eastern Kentucky, 54 percent to 39 percent.

"Among likely Kentucky voters 65 and older, McConnell holds a 14 point advantage over Grimes, 54 percent to 40 percent," Arnold reports. "That's the largest lead for either candidate within an age group. McConnell also leads (49 percent to 44 percent) among the youngest voters, 18 to 34."

Sam Youngman of the Herald-Leader writes, "Many Republicans . . . appear to be returning to McConnell's fold after a contentious GOP primary in which he defeated challenger Matt Bevin. In the February Bluegrass Poll, only 73 percent of Republicans said they would vote for McConnell. In May, with [Ed] Marksberry and Patterson included, that number dropped to 69 percent. But with the primary behind them, 82 percent of Republicans now support McConnell."

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/07/28/3355781/mitch-mcconnell-edges-ahead-of.html?sp=/99/322/&ihp=1#storylink=cpy

Another good sign for McConnell was that his favorability rose significantly from the previous poll, in mid-May, when 29 percent viewed him favorably and 49 percent were unfavorable. His latest numbers are 36 percent favorable and 43 percent unfavorable. Grimes, who has been the target of many television commercials from McConnell allies, lost her clearly favorable status. She was rated 36 percent favorable and 33 percent unfavorable; her May rating was 35-27.

One of McConnell's central arguments is that the way to change Washington is to change the Senate, by putting it in Republican hands and making him majority leader. Those in the poll seem sympathetic to that case; 48 percent said Republicans would do a better job running the Senate, while 40 percent said Democrats would. For the detailed results of the poll, click here.

July 15 roundup: Local coverage, big money, abortion-group ads and more gender politics

Here's an illustration of why local news media should cover and record (preferably on video) the Senate candidates when they come to town:

• Sen. Mitch McConnell "seemed to have little sympathy for students who have accumulated massive amounts of student debt during a town hall with constituents last week," Amanda Terkel writes for the Huffington Post. Asked in Oldham County "what changes should be made so that students aren't leaving school with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt," McConnell said there should be any government intervention and that students should look into schools that are cheaper. "Not everybody needs to go to Yale. I don't know about you guys, but I went to a regular ol' Kentucky college," McConnell said. He is a graduate of the University of Louisville and the law school at the University of Kentucky. Terkel's report was based on a story by The Oldham Era's Taylor Riley, whose report included a 36-minute video of McConnell's remarks.
• Grimes said she raised more than $4 million in the second quarter of the year, setting a Kentucky record and besting McConnell's $3.1 million. She having reported $6.2 million in her campaign treasury while McConnell reported $9.8 million. Complete reports aren't readily available today because senators have blocked making their reports digital. 
• Over the weekend, NPR reporter Tamara Keith provided a synopsis of what you could buy in Kentucky for $100 million, the predicted total expenses in the Senate race. "You could buy a bottle of the state's own Maker's Mark whiskey for nearly every man, woman and child in the state," Keith said. The race could end up being the most expensive in history. McConnell's unpopularity in Kentucky created an opening for Grimes, and "not only are the candidates and political parties spending big; so are outside groups," reports Keith.
• "A national abortion rights group is launching an attack ad against McConnell for 'never doing the right thing for Kentucky women'," Joe Arnold of Louisville's WHAS-TV reports. A NARAL Pro-Choice America spokeswoman told Arnold the group made "a mid-range five-figure ad buy for cable and another mid-range five figure ad buy online in the Lexington and Louisville markets," both of which are modest. Alison Lundergan Grimes said "the Supreme Court 'got it wrong' in the Hobby Lobby case," reports Arnold. McConnell's campaign spokeswoman said, "If you need to know who Alison Lundergan Grimes intends to represent if elected, consider that radical abortion groups are now descending upon Kentucky to run ads on her behalf. The fact that Alison Lundergan Grimes cannot even support Sen. McConnell's common-sense efforts to curb late-term abortions shows Kentuckians that her agenda aligns with President Obama and extreme pro-abortion groups in Washington."
• McConnell's campaign released a statement regarding McConnell's remarks on the Senate floor today on the "struggles of middle-class women under Obamacare," but the only distinction he made about women was to say that "Research shows that women make about 80 percent of the health-care decisions for their families in this country."
• McConnell played a little gender politics in criticizing President Obama's decision to replace Cheryl LaFleur as chairwoman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission with “a male nominee with less experience,” reports Ramsey Cox of The Hill. "McConnell pointed out that Bay has never served as a state utility regulator or as a FERC commissioner. Republicans and some pro-fossil fuel Democrats opposed Bay’s nomination in committee."
• "In a web video released Monday, McConnell's campaign counters Grimes's claims about McConnell's stance on Medicare policy with excerpts of last week's news coverage which uniformly reported that Grimes's commercial is misleading," Joe Arnold of WHAS 11 reports. The first 20 seconds of the video begins with Grimes's ad, "then proceeds with clips from local television stories and national fact-checking wings of newspapers which reached similar conclusions about the commercial," Arnold says, but the video does not include "critiques of factual problems with McConnell's commercial produced in response to the Grimes ad.".
• Grimes' campaign released a statement regarding McConnell's history in Washington and his 2011 vote to advance the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. McConnell "voted against extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed," the statement noted.
• Harry Enten of Five Thirty Eight writes that polls have over-estimated Democratic Senate candidates' strength in Kentucky and Georgia, the two states where national Democrats are trying to unseat incumbents. In Kentucky, polling data shows Grimes trailing McConnell by only 1.5 percentage points, but the political-statistics website gives her less than a 20 percent chance of winning.

Weekend roundup: McConnell's use of 'jihad' questioned; Medicare debate continues

This roundup may be updated.

• In his weekly column, Political Writer Joe Gerth of The Courier-Journal questions Sen. Mitch McConnell's occasional use of the word "jihad" to describe certain actions of the Obama administration: "The Arabic word for Holy War used in connection with a president who a sizable percentage of Americans incorrectly believe is Muslim, and about whom critics gleefully use his full name — Barack Hussein Obama — to underscore that incorrect impression." Gerth writes that the senator's recent use of the word in Benton, as reported by Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian, is "not the first time that McConnell has raised eyebrows when it comes to messaging about Obama and religion," noting that when asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" if he believed Obama is a Christian, McConnell said "The president says he's a Christian. I take him at his word." As for his latest use of "jihad," a McConnell campaign spokeswoman told Gerth, "It's offensive that anyone would suggest this comment is about anything more than this administration's war on coal." Gerth concludes, "We'll take her at her word."
• McConnell told reporters after a speech in Louisville Friday that Medicare must be changed to save it, but avoided addressing specific solutions, such as raising the eligibility age for it, which he floated as an idea as he "and other congressional leaders wrangled over a budget deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, Sam Youngman reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "What the voters of this state need to know is that no one currently receiving Medicare or likely to be receiving it in the near future would be impacted by any of the changes that we're talking about," he said.
• The Grimes campaign kept pressing its case on Medicare, saying McConnell was "trying to hide his record by attempting to water down his support for the Ryan budget," a 2011 plan that would have gradually privatized Medicare and raised beneficiaries' out-of-pocket costs. McConnell cast a procedural vote to move the plan forward, but his campaign has said "there is no way to speculate" if he would have actually voted to pass it. The Grimes release notes several instances in which McConnell praised the approach of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

July 10 roundup: Grimes releases Medicare web ad, won't say if she backs Obama immigration request

Alison Lundergan Grimes tried to keep the talk focused on Medicare, not immigration:

• Grimes released an online-only ad today adding a new wrinkle to her argument with Sen. Mitch McConnell about Medicare: His support for a higher eligibility age for Medicare as part of an overall deal on the federal budget. The ad refers to a Nov. 30, 2012, article in The Wall Street Journal in which "McConnell says a deal on the federal budget might be possible if lawmakers could reach bipartisan agreement on higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and slowing cost-of-living increases for Social Security," Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. The 48-second web ad is a response to a McConnell television ad released on Tuesday, which replied to Grimes's first attack ad. McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore told Youngman that a web video would not "extinguish the flames on her credibility."
  
• Grimes declined four times to say whether she supports President Obama's "request for $3.7 billion to address the immigration crisis on the nation's southern border," Sam Youngman reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Grimes "said she was for securing the border and an 'earned pathway to citizenship,' but in her answers to questions about Obama's supplemental request, she repeatedly referenced McConnell's opposition to an immigration reform bill the Senate approved last year." (Read more)
• McConnell said in a Senate floor speech that Obama appeared to be asking for a blank check "that would allow him to sustain his current failed policy," not "the right tools to solve the problem." For his news release, click here.
  
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/07/10/3331269/grimes-declines-to-take-a-stance.html?sp=/99/322/&ihp=1#storylink=cpy
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/07/10/3331269/grimes-declines-to-take-a-stance.html?sp=/99/322/&ihp=1#storylink=cpy
• "Will the 2013 and 2014 Fancy Farm Picnic's political speeches be the only time McConnell and Grimes appear on the same stage?" asks Joe Arnold of Louisville's WHAS-TV. Both campaigns have been reluctant to agree on a debate schedule. McConnell's campaign announced Wednesday that he would appear at the Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation's "Measure the Candidates" forum Aug. 20. "McConnell has stipulated three 'Lincoln-Douglas' style debates with no audience and a moderator to act only as a timekeeper, Grimes has pushed for audience participation," notes Arnold. Grimes has agreed to appear on KET's candidate forum Oct. 13 but McConnell has not.

July 9 roundup: McConnell replies to attack with one of his own, using broad claim that doesn't hold up

Looks like both candidates are now misleading on Medicare:

• Sen. Mitch McConnell responded quickly to Alison Lundergan Grimes' first attack ad by starting one of his own, quoting media criticism of her ad and making a charge that Obamacare hurts Medicare. "McConnell sought to use the misstep to further his strategic goal of tying Grimes to President Barack Obama, who made similar claims about Medicare in his 2012 re-election bid," reports Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Grimes has said she wants to "fix" Obamacare, not repeal it, but "has refused to say whether she would have voted for or against the federal health care law had she been in the Senate at the time," Youngman notes.
• The ad says Obamacare "cuts $700 billion from seniors' Medicare," but Youngman says the reductions "do not cut benefits for seniors. Instead, the cuts come from reduced payments to providers over a 10-year period." Actually, the "cuts" are not reductions in spending, but "the difference over 10 years (2013-2022) between anticipated Medicare spending and the changes that the law makes to reduce spending," wrote Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post. He noted, in writing about the same claim in the Senate race in North Carolina, that the law gave Medicare beneficiaries "new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs."
• In analyzing the same claim by Mitt Romney in 2012, Politifact gave details about the reductions: "They were mainly aimed at insurance companies and hospitals, not beneficiaries. The law makes significant reductions to Medicare Advantage, a subset of Medicare plans run by private insurers. . . . The idea was that competition among the private insurers would reduce costs, but in recent years the plans have actually cost more than traditional Medicare, so the health care law scales back the payments to private insurers. Hospitals, too, will be paid less if they have too many re-admissions, or if they fail to meet other new benchmarks for patient care."
• FactCheck, also reporting in 2012, said the reductions in anticipate spending will make Medicare more solvent, extending the life of its trust fund by eight years, to 2014. In an analysis of the two attack ads, it faults both of them: "The current Republican proposal is modeled on a plan that would lower seniors' Medicare premiums and total medical costs by 6 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And past and present GOP "premium support" proposals wouldn't have applied to anyone already getting Medicare.Furthermore, CBO has now effectively retracted the $6,000 figure on which Democrats have always tried to base their claim." It says McConnell's ad is "equally misleading," for the reasons given above.
• Grimes's campaign called the ad "deceitful" and issued a release saying the retired coal miner in her ad "won't be bullied by Mitch McConnell."
• McConnell, in a speech on the Senate floor and a release, again invited Obama administration officials to visit the state to see "how their war on coal jobs is harming Kentucky. . . . It’s time for these Washington Democrats to stop pretending that they’re not complicit in the administration’s war on coal jobs, or in the harm that it’s causing to our constituents. Because there’s real pain out there beyond the Democrat echo chamber — out in real world places like Pike County. Washington Democrats need to understand that Kentuckians are more than just some statistic on a bureaucratic balance sheet. These are real Americans who are hurting. And they deserve to have their voices heard. One way to do that, as I’ve suggested, is for the Administration to hold some listening sessions on its new energy regulations in the areas that stand to suffer most from them: in places like Eastern and Western Kentucky."

Grimes runs 1st attack ad, on Medicare, then deflects questions; AP says use of current senior is off base

Alison Lundergan Grimes started her first televised attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell today, setting off a round of back-and-forth between the campaigns. McConnell has not attacked Grimes with an ad of his own, but his allies have done plenty of that. Today the main "super PAC" supporting him started a new ad attacking her, as "part of the previously announced $4.66 million ad buy by the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition which runs through the end of August," reports Joe Arnold of Louisville's WHAS-TV. It says Grimes avoids answering questions, but she take a similar jab at McConnell in her new commercial.

The ad, "Question From Don," features retired coal miner Don Disney of Harlan County, who says, “Senator, I’m a retired coal miner. I want to know how you could’ve voted to raise my Medicare costs by six thousand dollars. How are my wife and I supposed to afford that?” Grimes and Disney sit silently for a few seconds, then she says, “I don't think he's gonna answer that.”

"McConnell cast no such vote," write Adam Beam and Calvin Woodward of The Associated Press. "The bill he supported in 2011, on which the ad's claim is based, proposed moving ahead on a plan in the House by GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to privatize Medicare over time. Some analysts said that could eventually raise costs for beneficiaries. But elderly people such as Disney — already retired or approaching retirement — would see no changes. . . . Neither Grimes nor her campaign explained why they showcased a Medicare recipient who would have been exempt from the changes proposed under Ryan's plan." Joe Arnold at Louisville's WHAS-TV called the ad "misleading."

In a detailed response, the Grimes campaign cited a National Journal forecast that the bill would "increase costs for seniors before 2022," when privatization would begin; and that the vote also meant McConnell "voted to increase seniors’ drug costs" because the plan would cut nursing-home funds and "repeal protections that keep prescription drug costs down by closing the Part D loophole" (actually, the "doughnut hole" between basic and catastrophic benefits).

The vote was procedural, notes Joe Gerth of The Courier-Journal. "McConnell was one of the Republicans who voted to proceed to a vote on the bill. The motion failed," as Republicans surely knew it would. McConnell's campaign challenged the accuracy of the ad and said it "showed that Grimes has "already hit the panic button by resorting to the oldest, most cynical attack in the Obama playbook to scare Kentucky seniors."

"The ad is an attempt both to signal support from miners but also to go after McConnell on an issue where Democrats feel they have the upper hand," reports PBS NewsHour Politics. The Grimes campaign told Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader that it is spending "six figures" to air the ad statewide,and said in a news release that it is "the beginning of a series of ads that will feature Kentuckians asking critical questions of McConnell."

However, Grimes "bypassed a question Tuesday about what she would do differently" with Medicare, Jacqueline Pitts of cn|2's "Pure Politics" reports. "When asked by Pure Politics what plan she would like to see to shore up the Medicare program for future generations, Grimes moved on to another question. A reporter from the Associated Press asked the same question as Grimes was leaving but she did not respond then either. The Grimes campaign later responded to the question emailed again by Pure Politics with an excerpt from the campaign website in which Grimes says she is running to protect Medicare."

Meanwhile, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition started a commercial that "skewers Grimes for dodging questions and muddling answers in the campaign," Arnold reports. "The ad runs through July 16 and is part of the previously announced $4.66 million ad buy by the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition which runs through the end of August."