Senate race roundup for Monday, May 12

Stories of interest in the U.S. Senate race today:

• Rolling Stone headlines a story by Mark Binelli "Deep in the heart of coal country, a vicious Senate battle rages, and the heart of the Republican Party is at stake."
• If Mitch McConnell hopes to keep using Obamacare as an issue, it may not be as strong as he figured, because the Kentucky version seems popular, says a new poll from NBC News.
• Joe Gerth of The Courier-Journal takes a look at the recent history of Kentucky cockfighting, which somehow became a big issue in the Republican primary.
• The McConnell-allied group Kentuckians for Strong Leadership responds to Alison Grimes' first TV ad with one tying her to President Obama, McConnell's main target.
• The Lexington Herald-Leader endorsed McConnell and Grimes Sunday, the former at length, saying Matt Bevin has "showed no inclination toward pragmatism, compromise or a real exchange of ideas, all critical to legislative success and leadership."
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/05/11/3237485/choose-mcconnell-in-gop-primary.html?sp=/99/349/#storylink=cpy
• Ronnie Ellis of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. offers wisdom as Grimes and McConnell hit the trail, targeting each other before the primary: "Those who come out to see the candidates in person sometimes ask better questions than reporters, and the candidate’s answers can be more illuminating. . . . Reporters often don’t know as much they think and can learn a lot from voters who are serious about evaluating the candidates."
• Bevin told a Madisonville crowd, "I'm a stronger canddiate than Mitch McConnell in the general election" because Grimes "runs on four things. She runs on some variation of: she’s young, she’s new, is a woman, and she’s not Mitch McConnell. . . . While they’re not substantive, they’re good enough to beat Mitch McConnell. . . . The reality is I negate her only competitive advantages. She’s then forced to run against me by talking about issues, by talking about vision, by talking about life experience. And she really has none of the above on any of those fronts." First reported by Scott Keyes of ThinkProgress, picked up by Huffington Post.