Politico writers on C-SPAN discuss McConnell campaign

John Bresnahan and Manu Raju, Politico correspondents who wrote a long story about Sen. Mitch McConnell's re-election victory, discussed his campaign Sunday night on C-SPAN's "Q and A" with Brian Lamb. Some tidbits:

McConnell had a preliminary game plan for the race all the way back in 2010. When faced with the possibility of a primary challenge from millionaire Matt Bevin, his consultants showed Bevin's consultants ads they would run, and did run the day Bevin filed his candidacy.

"Think about that," Raju said. "No one had ever heard of Matt Bevin in Kentucky and Mitch McConnell took him seriously enough" to make a six-figure ad buy on the first day of the race.

On the other side, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and her father, Jerry Lundergan, met with movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg before she became a candidate, seeking wanted assurances of money.

The morning of the day Grimes entered the race, she told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that she wasn't running, then met with supporters and announced. From the start there was a disconnect between her and Guy Cecil, executive director of the DSCC.

Grimes wasn't a good candidate, the reporters said, though not in so many words. "She was never able to really define herself," Raju said. "It was not clear what she stood for, what she actually believed."

McConnell campaign manager Josh Holmes has said that Grimes's refusal to say whether she voted for President Obama sealed her fate. "Who do you think advised her to do that?" Lamb asked.

"Everybody denied it was them giving her that advice," Raju replied. "It was a really curious decision." He said that when he asked Grimes in January if she would vote for Obama again, she replied  "Your facts are mistaken" but wouldn't explain herself.

Bresnahan said, "Democrats up on the hill were just flabbergasted that she would say something like this. . . . "I've talked to some African American lawmakers who were kind of incensed by the whole thing." As for McConnell, "I'm surprised he didn't start laughing in the middle of that debate."

Grimes's repeated jabs that McConnell had grown wealthy in office "got under his skin," Bresnahan said. McConnell's campaign produced an ad showing McConnell shopping at Kroger and driving a modest car but didn't use it because a focus group didn't believe it.

The program also included two segments of an interview Brian Farkas of C-SPAN did with McConnell two years ago but has never aired. (It will soon on C-SPAN3, Lamb said.) In one segment, he talks about Henry Clay, author of major compromises over slavery before the Civil War.

Lamb asked if McConnell will be a compromiser as majority leader. "That's going to be the big question," Raju said: how much he tries to unite his caucus and how much he tries to attract Democratic support.

McConnell: 5 to 10 Democratic senators appear ready to vote with GOP on some issues; EPA still top target

By Al Cross
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said Saturday that half the senators who have called him since his re-election have been Democrats, giving him hope that he can create bipartisan coalitions as the chamber's new majority leader, especially to block Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

McConnell at meeting

"They're anxious to be under new management, where their work has a chance to be heard, and we're going to do that," McConnell told a meeting of the state Republican Party Executive Committee, adding later, "It's apparent that a number of the Democrats have had it up to here with Barack Obama themselves." He told reporters later, "I think they're getting a little bit tired of doing the president's bidding."

"That's the good news," McConnell told his partisans. "The bad news is, I haven't heard anything from the president since the election that indicates he has an interest in changing anything." He added later, "I keep waiting for Obama to get the message and move to the center."

He said to applause that just as Obama has declared "war on coal," he will "declare war on EPA."

McConnell made clear during his campaign that he would use budget bills to keep the agency from pursuing proposed limits on carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, but he said there are issues other than coal: "There is a widespread anger over the country" about EPA's overreach, he said. He told reporters later, "Coal is the most conspicuous example if it, but it's happening in a lot of other areas."

The other example he cited is EPA's proposal to redefine "waters of the United States," a seminal phrase in the Clean Water Act, in ways that have confused and angered many agricultural interests.

Republicans will hold at least 53 of the 100 seats in the new Senate, and McConnell said "I'm pretty optimistic" that a 54th seat will go their way after a Dec. 6 runoff in Louisiana. Asked if he thinks he can assemble the 60 votes that he said would continue to be needed to pass significant legislation, he said "I think there's a pool of five to 10 Democrats" who could create a center-right coalition.

McConnell said that number may become clearer after the Senate votes next week on the bill that would order completion of the Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline from Canada to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. "We don't know," he said, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has prevented votes on such legislation, including coal issues. Here's a video clip from cn|2's "Pure Politics":

Whatever bills the Republican-controlled Senate and House may pass, Obama could veto, and McConnell has said that Republicans will not shut down the government by holding appropriations bills hostage.

Asked if GOP leaders might authorize continued operation of essential government services but exclude EPA from that, he said the question was too hypothetical to answer. Asked if a bill that combined a number of issues could get the 67 Senate votes needed to override a veto, he said "I have no idea."

He told the party committee that he expects to have the "bourbon summit" with Obama that has been discussed since the president said he would like to meet with the senator over Kentucky's most famous beverage, but "Whether it's anything beyond a p.r. gimmick remains to be seen."

He concluded his remarks to the committee by saying, "It's harder to be the offensive coordinator than the defensive coordinator . . . It's a responsibility I welcome, and I'm going to carry it out as best I can."

McConnell then told reporters, "I'm going to be more inclined to judge him by what he does than by what he says. I don't want to minimize this opportunity for the country." He said many items that need attention, such as a long-range transportation plan and regulation of government-sponsored financial enterprises, "are not all that partisan." Here's a cn|2 video:

McConnell reiterated that he will support Sen. Rand Paul if he runs for president, but said Paul would certainly seek re-election in 2016. State law bars someone from being on the same ballot for both offices, and Paul's camp has suggested a way around that would be to replace the Republican presidential primary with a caucus.

McConnell said he had given no thought to that idea.

That issue would be decided by the party committee that McConnell addressed first.

The senator said that since he was speaking to a room full of "political junkies," he wanted to mention a few exit-poll results; the one he highlighted was that he won the votes of women by 3 percentage points even though he had a female challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes: "I think we successfully made the argument to women that while gender's not unimportant, it's not the only reason to cast a vote in an election."

The crowd appreciated McConnell's digs at Bill and Hillary Clinton, who campaigned repeatedly for Grimes and may think that Kentucky is on the list of states she can carry in the 2016 presidential race. "I don't think she'll ever be competitive in Kentucky," he said. "This is not 1992 or 1996," when her husband won the state with pluralities, the last one with 0.9 percent of the vote.

Exit poll shows Grimes won women by 5 points, but McConnell won men by 19, and independents by 15

The exit poll in the Senate race showed that women favored Alison Lundergan Grimes by 51 percent to 46 percent, but men supported Sen. Mitch McConnell by an even larger margin, 58-39.

"That was the key to the McConnell victory in a race that quite rankly many people thought would be close," John King said on CNN.

But perhaps just as indicative of the outcome was the poll result among the 19 percent of voters who said in the exit poll that they are independents. Among them, McConnell won 54-39.

McConnell's leadership position and potential also figured into the vote. Asked if party control of the Senate was important to their vote, 86 percent said yes. McConnell carried that group, 55-43.

Grimes carried self-described moderates 52-44, but McConnell carried conservatives 87-10. Grimes carried liberals 81-16, but they were only 19 percent of the electorate.

Grimes ran hard on raising the minimum wage, and she appeared to win among people with annual incomes under $30,000, 53 percent to 41 percent. But McConnell won all other income groups. When grouped above and below $50,000, voters under that figure were evenly divided.

Grimes apparently carried only one age group, those voters 25 to 29, and her 52-43 margin among them was not certain because they only made up 9 percent of the electorate. McConnell's best age group was voters in their 40s, which he won 63-34.

One of the best predictors of a person's vote by party is how often they attend religious services, and the national pattern was reflected Tuesday. McConnell ran away with those who attend at least weekly (they made up 48 percent of the electorate) while Grimes appeared to win among occasional worshippers and the 13 percent who said they never attend services.

Among the approximately half of the electorate who identify as white evangelicals or born-again Christians, McConnell won 68-30. Grimes won the rest 55-43.

Gun-owning households (64 percent of the electorate) went for McConnell 6630, while those without guns went for Grimes 61-37.

McConnell won all the regions identified by the poll except his home Jefferson County, which he lost 57-41. The poll report on CNN did not give the margin of error for such sub-samples or the overall poll.

McConnell's main theme was to tie Grimes to President Obama. King noted that 62 percent in the poll said they were angry or dissatisfied with the Obama administration, and McConnell won that group, 80-17. Grimes carried those who were satisfied or enthusiastic, 84-14. Forty percent said Here's a video of King's report on the poll's preliminary results, some of which vary from the final numbers:

Grimes was short and not sweet in her concession

By Brenton Ward

University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes kept her remarks brief Tuesday night as she conceded the U.S. Senate election to incumbent Mitch McConnell. 

Grimes did not mention or congratulate McConnell in her three-minute speech, instead using her last appearance of the race to repeat the issues she had hoped to take to with her to Washington.

“My hope is that a message has been sent to Congress, that we need to work to increase the minimum wage, to close the gender pay gap, and bring good paying jobs back to the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” she said.

On stage with her husband and Gov. Steve Beshear, Grimes tried to elevate a clearly unenthusiastic crowd of about 200 people outside The Carrick House in downtown Lexington.

“While tonight didn’t bring us the result that we had hoped for, this journey, the fight for you -- it was worth it,” Grimes said. She added later, “This fight was for each and every one of you, and I will work my hardest to keep this amazing organization that we have built together intact to fight for a brighter and better future.”

Grimes has served as Kentucky’s secretary of state since 2012, defeating a Democrat whom Gov. Steve Beshear appointed to fill a vacancy, then easily winning the general election. She became the Democratic nominee for Senate after receiving 77 percent of the votes in a four-way primary with token opponents.

Grimes called McConnell to concede within the first hour after polls had closed in Western Kentucky. The Associated Press called the election for McConnell minutes after those closings. He went on to receive 56.2 percent of the vote to 40.7 percent for Grimes and 3.1 percent for Libertarian David Patterson.

While running on the Democratic ticket, Grimes went to great lengths to distance herself from President Obama, going so far as refusing to say whether or not she voted for the president in 2008 and 2012.  McConnell’s campaign often tied Grimes to Obama in speeches and advertisements.

Grimes said she disagreed with Obama’s coal and gun policies, and was endorsed by the United Mine Workers of America and other labor unions, as well as Kentucky’s largest newspapers, The Courier-Journal and The Lexington Herald-Leader.  She also brought in high-profile Democrats, primarily former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to campaign for her. 

Candidates' experience and Grimes's ties to Obama matter to voters in one Lexington precinct

By Paige Hobbs
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

Votes appear to be steady across the state of Kentucky today as the U.S. Senate election takes place between Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The candidates’ amount of experience and ties to President Obama seem to be the biggest factors for those at the Duke precinct polling place at Morton Middle School on Tates Creek Road in Lexington's Chevy Chase neighborhood.

For some, McConnell’s 30 years of experience and differences with President Obama are a positive qualities. For others, the fresh face and inexperience of Grimes is more appealing, as are her similarities to Obama.

Marilyn Chillery, 67, a retired education administrator, said that she voted for McConnell and that Grimes's lack of experience greatly influenced her vote. “I like what he’s done. . . I think he’s doing a good job," she said. “She doesn’t have the experience.”

Jennifer, a 53-year-old teacher who declined to give her last name, agrees and said she too voted for McConnell: “I think he’s done a good job and I can’t imagine when he’s getting ready to be in such a strong position why we would risk that.”

Others were concerned about ties to Obama. Claire Hanson, 43, a stay-at-home mother, said she voted for McConnell simply because “she’s a big supporter of Obama and I’m not a big supporter of him or pretty much anything he stands for.”

Others see it differently.

Mark and Ann Bjork, University of Kentucky professors, said they voted for Grimes. He said "She's for the people" and "He's really locked up the senate."

She said, "He's been 30 years of an idiot," and "started out saying the main thing we want to accomplish" is dedying Obama a second term. "We're very strong Obama. . . We're crazy about Alison."

Sarah Adams, a 36-year-old teacher, agrees that McConnell has been in office too long and said she voted for Grimes. “I feel like Mitch McConnell has been in office for a very long time and I think it would be good to have a fresh face. She seems very driven and I feel like she could do a good job.”

This race has been one of great interest to voters across the Bluegrass, as it has been tight throughout most of its run. Tonight from 7 to 10 p.m. Eastern time KET will have election results and analysis.

Leading Ky. political scientist gives views on the race

UPDATE: Here's a video of Voss discussing the race.

Dr. Stephen Voss of the University of Kentucky is perhaps the state's leading political scientist, and the one most quoted in stories on the Senate race. He is the latest poli-sci guy to answer and comment on a series of questions about Senate races from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Here are some excerpts:

"Although Grimes had some success convincing voters that she might be better for the coal industry than McConnell, especially in the mountainous region of Eastern Kentucky, the issue remained tilted toward the Republicans throughout the contest. The sluggish economic recovery also served as a backdrop to the 2014 Kentucky Senate campaign. Kentuckians might be conservative on social and cultural issues, but they do not especially tilt to the right when it comes to domestic economic policy. It's a poor state, and many Kentuckians rely on national social-welfare policies to get by." However, "Turmoil in Syria and Iraq, as well as at the southern U.S. border, helped keep attention directed away from bread-and-butter economic matters."

"Kentucky contains a disproportionately large number of swing voters who were in play for the Senate election. . . . These relatively moderate, if not conservative, voters tend to be registered Democrats but they often side with the Republicans in national elections, and many seem to have no loyalty to either side. . . . The McConnell strategy therefore was simple and straightforward: Do anything and everything to link Grimes to the President. . . . McConnell and Grimes appear to be splitting these swing voters fairly evenly, depending on how they're defined, but Grimes needed a much better share than that to compensate for the conservative tilt of the state's partisans." (Read more)

National news media taking a final look at the race; Kentucky campuses holding mock election

A rolling roundup as we head into the final weekend . . .

• "Kentucky's Senate race, one of the most closely watched in the country, boils down to which Washington insider is worse in the eyes of voters:" Sen. Mitch McConnell or President Obama, writes Francine Kiefer of The Christian Science Monitor. Stephen Voss, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, summed it up for Kiefer this way: "We have an unpopular senator who leads the resistance against an unpopular president."
• "McConnell’s path to victory runs through the hilly coal fields [sic] in the east, the buzzing sheet metal factories along the state’s southern tier and in the barns leaking with pouring rain in the flat and cow-spotted western farmland," Jason Horowitz of The New York Times writes after traveling with McConnell through those areas. "At the end of his 14 campaign rallies and hundreds of miles lined with falling orange and ocher autumn leaves, Mr. McConnell seemed to have reached a better, less anxious, place."
• McConnell seems to be a little looser than usual as the race comes to a close. He told 85 business and political leaders at a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce meeting, "The American people have seemed to reach the conclusion they have had enough of this crap," meaning "six years of Democratic control of both the presidency and the Senate," reports Amanda Van Benschoten of The Kentucky Enquirer.
• The Kentucky Campus Compact, comprising colleges and universities in the state, is holding a mock election online. The site also has links to overviews of the race, a voters' guide, the KET debate, a debate fact check, this blog and information about voting, campaign finance and polling places. The site is co-sponsored by the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement at Northern Kentucky University, the Campus Election Engagement Project and the Public Life Foundation of Owensboro.

Roundup: Sunday takeouts, comment and a tour map

A roundup from Sunday's newspapers and more . . .

• Jim Carroll of The Courier-Journal profiles Sen. Mitch McConnell, "a hair's breadth away from attaining his life's ambition" of being Senate majority leader. "Should that happen, friends and allies of McConnell see an opportunity for him to remake the Senate."
• McConnell pitched his leadership prospects to a Republican crowd in Owensboro, Sam Youngman reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "This is not just about bragging rights for me personally, this is about you and whether or not our state is going to be in a very prominent role in setting the agenda,” McConnell said.
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/10/18/3488398_mcconnell-tells-w-kentucky-becoming.html?sp=/99/322/&rh=1#storylink=cpy
• The C-J's Joe Gerth writes that if Alison Lundergan Grimes wins, she will owe Bill and Hillary Clinton. He quotes a Grimes remark, during Hillary Clinton's visit to Louisville Wednesday: “Mitch McConnell just doesn’t think that Kentuckians know how to do math. You see, this election is not about who’s in the White House now, the president has two more years. This is a six year term. It’s about the senator who will work the next four years with whoever is in the White House, no matter who he or she might be.” With that, Grimes pointed at Clinton.
• In other C-J columns, University of Kentucky journalism professor Al Cross writes in his C-J column that Grimes and McConnell are both doing "flim-flam," Grimes in her broadcast ads on immigration and McConnell in their only debate, on what he would do for Obamacare's beneficiaries if it were repealed; and Carroll cites the latter in saying that President Obama has become a liability for both candidates.
• For the Herald-Leader, columnist Larry Dale Keeling says the news media made "a kerfluffle over nothing," the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's ending of ad buys in Kentucky.
• Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post can't understand Grimes's refusal to say if she voted for Obama: "The voters who would be alienated by a straightforward answer are probably already lost to Grimes, but I can imagine wavering voters being turned off by her dodginess. Even worse is Grimes’s sanctimonious effort to wrap her evasiveness in patriotic bunting, the 'sanctity of the ballot box' and the privacy protections for voters enshrined in the state Constitution."
• Grimes made six stops in Eastern Kentucky on Saturday; here's a story from Lana Bellamy of the Ashland Independent. Grimes visited some of the same counties that McConnell will see on a three-day tour Monday through Wednesday, for which he is seeking volunteers to accompany him. Here's a map of McConnell's route and the counties Grimes visited, created with MapQuest and Photoshop:
  
  
  The East Kentucky Coal Field generally runs eastward from the Daniel Boone National Forest, the southwest-to-northeast swath of green on the map.
• Scott Wartman of The Kentucky Enquirer fact-checks "the war on coal." Bret Baier of Fox News did a takeout story on the issue as part of an hour-long package; it airs again Sunday night at 9 EDT.

Clinton-Grimes coverage roundup; McConnell's Obamacare lines in debate get three Pinocchios

A post-Hillary roundup has plenty of good nuggets . . .

• Bloomberg's Lisa Lerer reports from Louisville: "National Democrats have gone tepid on her. Progressive groups are attacking her. Latino leaders are condemning her campaign. But there's at least one powerful force in the Democratic Party sticking by Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes: Hillary Clinton."
• Clinton-Grimes coverage from The Courier-Journal is here; from WFPL, here; from the Lexington Herald-Leader, here; from MSNBC, here; from Politico, here; and from The New York Times, here. UPDATE: Joe Sonka of Insider Louisville has a sharp take.
• Sen. Mitch McConnell continues to be criticized for his remarks about Obamacare and its Kentucky instrumentality Kynect. Glenn Kessler, writes in "The Fact Checker" column for The Washington Post, "McConnell’s statements make little sense unless he has a specific plan that would allow Kentuckians who currently have insurance to retain it. He relies on narrow technical details that have a ring of truth—the grants for the Web site have ended; the Kynect Web site could continue; Medicaid expansion was a decision by the governor. But he leaves the big picture—What is his replacement plan?—completely empty." Kessler gives McConnell three Pinocchios, which means the statements have a "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions."
• John Dickerson of Slate finds fault with both candidates' "disingenuous evasions" which were "notable because they seemed so brazen." He concludes, "Unfortunately this is the only time Grimes and McConnell plan to square off. Of course, voters can stop them on the street and ask for clarifications. They’ve got three weeks until Election Day."
• The Kentucky Senate race is second only to North Carolina in secret contributions to supposedly independent campaigns, Paul Bluemnthal reports for Huffington Post. "The primary backer of McConnell's campaign has been a dark-money group called the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition. The group has spent more than $12 million without disclosing a single donor. It is run by Steven Law, a former aide to McConnell and the head of Karl Rove's Crossroads groups." Such groups "are ostensibly formed to advocate for a social welfare purpose, such as a cleaner environment or -- depending on one's definition of social welfare -- lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthy. Such groups are not allowed to spend the majority of their time advocating for political candidates, although the case of the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition illustrates that this limitation is, at best, difficult to enforce."
• Democratic women in the Senate are rallying around Grimes, reports Jim Carroll of The Courier-Journal.

Grimes immigration ad questioned; Obama vote flap, McConnell ad and his lines on Kynect draw fire

A rolling roundup while waiting for Hillary . . .

• Former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton will appear for Alison Lundergan Grimes tonight in Louisville. Philip M. Bailey of Louisville's WFPL reports that every county has a sign (right). The campaign says it will videostream the event at http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KDu8gjJi%2FhY5spoZeXWyv9USJipC9b3f. Sen. Mitch McConnell's campaign spokeswoman, Allison Moore, said in an email, "The only possible reason why Alison Grimes would throw a party for Hillary Clinton but refuse to admit she voted for Barack Obama is that she thinks we're all too stupid to figure out they have the exact same policy views. Instead of highly produced events with celebrity guests, most Kentuckians would settle for an honest answer from Alison Grimes on anything related to the job of a U.S. senator."
• Pro-immigration groups are calling on Grimes to pull her newest television and radio commercial, in which she says "I've never supported amnesty or benefits for illegal immigrants and I never will" and a narrator uses the term "illegal aliens." Sam Youngman reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader, "After speaking at a Commerce Lexington policy breakfast Wednesday morning, Grimes refused to acknowledge or answer repeated questions about whether her campaign will pull the ad."
• The ad says, "Only Mitch McConnell has voted to give amnesty and taxpayer-funded benefits to 3 million illegal aliens," as small type notes that was in 1985 and 1986. "Mitch is at the heart of everything that's wrong in Washington, from hypocrisy to greed to gridlock." Viewers may infer that Grimes opposes such measures, but she repeated at the breakfast that she favors a Senate-passed bill that would create "a pathway to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants if "You've got a good job, you have a background check, you learn English, you pay your taxes."
  
• An ad McConnell started this week, featuring undercover video of Grimes supporters saying or suggesting that she doesn't really mean what she says about coal, doesn't prove the charge, Robert Farley writes for FactCheck.org. The ad claims the videos of "Grimes' own staff and donors show Grimes is lying," but there is no proof that the "staff" members are or were.
• McConnell has a new ad, about his sponsorship of a law that increased funding to expedite DNA testing, with emphasis on its use in sexual-assault cases.
• Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," is sticking by his remark that Grimes "disqualified herself" by refusing to say if she voted for President Obama, which McConnell is using in a TV ad. Todd told The Huffington Post, "Campaigns that try to make others the issue are usually trying to avoid their own scrutiny. . . . No journalist likes to be used in a TV ad. It is cheap and likely useless."
• Some observers said Grimes' continued refusal to reveal her vote wasn't as important as McConnell's characterization of Obamacare's Kentucky element as "a website." Danny Vinik writes for The New Republic, a liberal magazine, "You’d expect such a ridiculous argument to be the highlight of the debate with the media quickly and easily debunking it."
• Ron Fournier of the nonpartisan, middle-of-the road National Journal writes, "What's more disqualifying? A Democrat who refuses to say whether she voted for President Obama, or a Republican who waffles on Obamacare and essentially calls it 'fine'? . . . He can't have it both ways. Uprooting Obamacare upends Kynect. . . . He's playing with the health of 500,000 Kentuckians. He's misleading conservatives who don't think Obamacare is 'fine.' He's a hypocrite."

Coal, jobs, health care dominate the only real debate

By Brenton Ward, Cheyene Miller, Tyler Spanyer, Ben Tompkins and Megan Ingros
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

            LEXINGTON, Ky. – Coal, jobs, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were the major subjects of Monday night’s debate between Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.

 

Grimes, McConnell and moderator Bill Goodman before air.

           The hour-long debate on KET reflected the course of the race, in that Grimes spent most of her time attacking McConnell, and McConnell did likewise with President Obama, trying to link Grimes to him.

            The candidates swerved around many questions, avoiding definitive stances and leaving Kentucky voters unclear of the specifics.

            Perhaps the best example of that was discussion of the health-care law, generally known as Obamacare.

McConnell reiterated that he wants to repeal it “root and branch,” but he was pressed to say what he would do with Kynect, the state health-insurance exchange created under the law, which he repeatedly called a website.

Asked what would happen to Kynect if the law were repealed, he said, “The state exchange can continue it if they want to. . . . States can decide whether or not to expand Medicaid, and our governor has decided to expand Medicaid.”

            Obamacare funds subsidies for private insurance bought through the website. It pays the entire cost of Medicaid for newly eligible patients through 2016, falling to a floor of 90 percent by 2020.

            Pressed about whether he would support the continuance of Kynect, McConnell said, “That’s fine, yeah, I think it’s fine to have a website.”

            Grimes, asked how she would vote on a bill to repeal Obamacare, said, “There is work that we have to do to fix the Affordable Care Act, but we have to have a senator that actually realizes what the realities are here in Kentucky, and the fictional fantasy land that Mitch McConnell is in, doesn’t show the statistics here in this state.”

            Earlier, she said, “This is a matter of standing up for 500,000 Kentuckians” who have obtained coverage through Kynect.” She added, “I will not be a senator that rips that insurance from their hand.” But she offered no new specifics on how she would “streamline” the law.

            The debate was dominated by economic issues, which for both candidates included support of Kentucky’s declining coal industry in the face of Obama administration regulations that would stop construction of coal-fired power plants by putting limits on carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Asked if the U.S. should take the lead in fighting climate change, McConnell said, “My job is to look after Kentucky’s coal miners.”

Grimes said, “I recognize, unlike Senator McConnell, the realities of global warming, but I do believe we have to take a balanced approach” that protects jobs and “leave this world a better place.”

Grimes noted her endorsement by the United Mine Workers of America and said she supports measures to improve coal mine health and safety and guarantee miners’ benefits.

            McConnell said that Grimes’s first vote in the Senate would be to re-elect as majority leader Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who he said has blocked all legislation aimed at the anti-coal regulations. He said Grimes broke her vow to raise the issue at a fund-raiser Reid held for her.

            Grimes has said she raised the issue with Reid privately. Last night, she said, “I did have very strong words for Senator Reid regarding an energy policy that he is misguided on.”

            McConnell said in the debate’s opening exchange, “My opponent has spent most of her time trying to deceive everybody about her own views.” Regarding her widely reported refusal to say whether she voted for Obama, even though she was an Obama delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, he noted that some Democratic officeholders chose not to attend the convention.

            Moderator Bill Goodman asked Grimes why she has been reluctant to say how she voted. She replied, “Bill there’s no reluctance. This is a matter of principle. Our constitution grants, here in Kentucky, the constitutional right for privacy in the ballot box, for a secret ballot.”

Grimes said that as secretary of state, Kentucky’s chief election official, she was obligated to protect such rights. “I’m not going to compromise a constitutional right . . . to curry favor with one or the other side, or members of the media.”

McConnell replied, “There’s no sacred right to not announce how we vote.”

The candidates argued some facts in the debate, and their campaigns kept arguing afterward.

Grimes said a bill to allow refinancing of student loans was bipartisan, but McConnell said it was not. Grimes campaign manager Jonathan Hurst noted afterward that there were 58 votes to end McConnell’s filibuster against the bill; the Senate has 55 Democrats.

            Grimes repeatedly advocated raising the minimum wage, but McConnell said that would cost too many jobs in a soft economy and said it would be better to expand the earned-income tax credit for the working poor. Hurst said McConnell introduced legislation to cut the credit in 2010.

McConnell senior adviser Josh Holmes disputed Grimes’s charge that McConnell had voted to keep tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas: “That’s received the worst possible false rating in almost every publication that’s reviewed it, yet she continues to talk about it.”

The candidates agreed on at least one thing, that the greatest accomplishment of the next six-year Senate term would be to bring more jobs to Kentucky. McConnell said he would be better able to do that because “there’s a great likelihood I will be the leader of the majority,” while Grimes said noted that she had released a jobs plan and McConnell hadn’t.

Morning roundup: As we wait for the debate, a look at issues of coal and climate change

Boston Globe illustration for column by John Sununu

Here's a pre-debate roundup:

• "As the gulf widens between Democrats and Republicans nationally on climate change, coal has closed the gap in Kentucky, particularly in the U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes," writes Scott Wartman of The Kentucky Enquirer, outlining their stands on the related issues.
• Former Sen. John Sununu, a Republican from New Hampshire, writes in The Boston Globe that President Obama's energy policy is hurting Democratic candidates, especially in the major coal-producing states of Kentucky, West Virginia and Montana. In Kentucky, "Obama’s war on coal turned an otherwise competitive race in Republicans’ favor." The race still ranks at the bottom, 13th, among The Washington Post's ranking of the likelihood that a seat will change parties.
• Wartman also has a story about what to watch for in the debate, tonight at 8 EDT on KET and C-SPAN.
• The race is the "closest watched in the nation," Michael Falcone writes on ABC News's "The Note."
• "The long-awaited battle of the Bluegrass is must-see TV Monday evening," Jessica Taylor writes for The Hill. She quotes University of Kentucky professor and commentator Al Cross as saying Grimes's "refusal to say whether or not she voted for Obama is not playing well. Not because of the substance but because of her inability to articulate a sensible answer to a tough questions. She’s got to be able to do that Monday night or she’s toast.”
• Al Hunt of Bloomberg News writes for The New York Times about the avalanche of secret money in Senate races: "When he fought campaign finance reform years ago, Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, suggested the real antidote was disclosure. Now he says forcing disclosure would run afoul of the First Amendment and would harass groups such as the Humane Society."
• We know more about Grimes's schedule after the debate than usual; she has announced a series of Northern Kentucky appearances Tuesday with Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, and Hillary Clinton will be speaking with her at a Wednesday night rally in Louisville. McConnell's Senate office announced that he will spend Tuesday in Whitley and Laurel counties, Republican strongholds.

Grimes vote flap; climate; secret money; Obamacare recipient, a disabled miner, uneasy talking about it

Weekend roundups appear likely for the rest of the race . . .

• Coverage of the race continues to be dominated by Alison Lundergan Grimes's refusal to say whether she voted for President Obama. "Grimes found herself under attack from the right, left and the middle on Friday," reports The Courier-Journal's Joe Gerth.
• "She's just been getting hammered across the national media," reporter Lawrence Smith of WDRB-TV said on KET's "Comment on Kentucky" Friday night. He said the statement by Chuck Todd of NBC News that "She disqualified herself" was "over the top, but that shows you the impact of that non-answer. . . . It feeds this perception that she's a programmed candidate, a consulted candidate." Looking toward Monday night's debate, Smith said Grimes "has to come off as very informed, articulate, not programmed."
• Insider Louisville's Joe Sonka, a critic of Sen. Mitch McConnell, writes about his Twitter exchange with Todd on the topic.
• Grimes also came under fire from conservative, nationally syndicated "Mallard Fillmore" cartoonist Bruce Tinsley, who lives in Southern Indiana, using her as an example of Democrats distancing themselves from Obama:
  
  
• McConnell said the Obama-vote flap "underscores that this entire campaign has been about trying to deceive the voters of Kentucky." Asked if he "voted for Richard Nixon, the only president to resign from office . . . McConnell said, 'I sure did'," in 1972, reports Jack Brammer of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
• Gerth writes in his weekly C-J column, "It wasn’t a good week in Kentucky for those of you who like your U.S. Senate candidates to actually answer questions." By not giving his view on climate change, "McConnell was just as guilty of not answering a question — repeatedly — and on a subject one could argue is much more significant and could have consequences not just in this Senate race but in the world."
• McConnell's stance on climate change drew fire from cartoonist Jeff Danziger:
  
  
• Al-Jazeera America has concluded a five-part series on "exploring how political issues are playing out in personal ways in the Bluegrass State this election season," especiallly coal.Part 3 looked at "dark money," the millions of secret contributions to political operations that are inundating Kentucky with ads in the Senate race. "Kentucky has more dark money flowing into it than any other Senate race except Colorado’s," Libby Casey and Philip Maravilla report. They quote University of Kentucky journalism professor and political commentator Al Cross: “I think the more money you have in an election, the less substantive discussion you have of the issues. The candidates let their money and the outside money do the talking for them.”
• A series segment about health care features disabled coal miner Frank Dixon, 52, of Benham, who is on Medicaid because of Obamacare but uncomfortable with it: "Once he was insured, he said, the first thing he did was get his back checked out. But when asked if he supports Obamacare, Dixon lets out a long sigh and fidgets in his chair. 'I don't know how to answer that,' he said. 'Some things are left unsaid.'” For a story from Kentucky Health News, click here.

Chuck Todd says Grimes 'disqualified herself' by refusing to say whether she voted for Obama

A rolling roundup into the weekend:

• Alison Lundergan Grimes "disqualified herself" by refusing repeatedly to say whether she voted for President Obama, "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd of NBC News said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." He said, "Is she ever going to answer a tough question on anything? You want to be a U.S. senator? If you can't say -- if you can't find a way to stand behind your party's president, you can disagree with him, but can't answer that basic question, and come across looking ridiculous. I think she disqualified herself." Other observers made similar comments; The Washington Post says the episode is "getting noticed, big time." For background and video from Real Clear Politics, click here.
• Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann write on NBC's "First Read": "Grimes could have easily said, 'Of course I voted for President Obama because on economic issues, he appeared to have the best plan focused on the middle class in 2012. But like a lot of Americans, I’ve been disappointed …' Or something like that. By the way, if Grimes is going to win, she needs a fired-up Democratic base as well as an ability to win swing voters. Her answer could serve to turn off base Democratic voters while at the same time coming across as disingenuous to folks in the middle who may be totally unhappy with McConnell."
• Adam Beam of The Associated Press delves into the background of Sen. Mitch McConnell's TV ad about his help for a woman whose child was kidnapped to Mali. "As much as campaign ads are meant to convey candidates and issues in the simplest, starkest terms, there's always more to the story," Beam reports.
• The coal industry " that Grimes and McConnell have spent so much time and money fighting over is a bit of an illusion, several experts said. Coal has been dying for decades within Kentucky," reports Katherine Bagley of Inside Climate News. "Coal played an integral part in Kentucky's economy for nearly 150 years. And it became deeply rooted in the state's culture in the process, woven into regional music, literature, folklore, and traditions. However, production started falling in the late 1980s," as reserves became more expensive to mine, and more recently cheap natural gas and environmental regulations have had an impact.
• The Grimes ad that accused McConnell and his wife of taking money from anti-coal groups is FactCheck.org's the "whopper of the week," says Politico's "Morning Score," though that terminology doesn't appear in FactCheck's report.

Pro-McConnell group uses images of Chinese in 'War in Coal' mailer; Grimes won't say if she voted for Obama

A rolling roundup as we head into the pre-debate weekend . . .

• The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, a political committee supporting Sen. Mitch McConnell with money from undisclosed donors, has mailed this piece (click on images for larger versions):
  
  
  
  
  
• "Grimes has refused seven times in the past seven days to say whether or not she voted for President Barack Obama for president," Sam Youngman reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Grimes was asked three times by a Herald-Leader reporter after an event on Oct. 2 if she voted for Obama, ignoring the question and turning her back on the reporter asking it. On Thursday, Grimes refused four times to tell The Courier-Journal’s editorial board if she voted for Obama." For The Washington Post's story, click here.
• Grimes has new television and radio commercials responding to those by pro-McConnell committees accusing her of favoring amnesty and citizenship for illegal immigrants. "I've never supported amnesty or benefits for illegal immigrants, and I never will," Grimes says. She favors a Senate-passed bill that would create a path to citizenship, with penalties, waiting periods and other requirements. Opponents call that amnesty, but proponents do not.
• McConnell started a new TV ad featuring Dr. Sandy Schuldheisz of Somerset saying, "As a doctor, I see how Obamacare hurts patients’ access to care. As a mom, I know it hurts families. . . . Like many, we now pay more for less coverage."

McConnell uses Obama's recent words in new ad; conservative sees trouble with Grimes and labor

Friday's roundup of some recent events . . . 

• Joel Gehrke, a contributor for National Review Online, reports that labor activists are upset with their treatment by the Alison Lundergan Grimes campaign. An audio recording of a meeting between union activists and Phinis Hundley, a speaker for the campaign, was obtained by National Review. In the recording, union activists say there has been a lack of communication with Grimes and they are “not impressed” with those in her camp who are “not very good” at following up with supporters or potential voters. Additionally, one man in the call questions whether the Grimes’ campaign has abandoned organized labor altogether.
• Sen. Mitch McConnell has started a 30-second television commercial that claims, “A vote for Alison is a vote for his policies.” President Obama is seen giving a speech and is quoted as saying, “I’m not on the ballot this fall, but make no mistake, these policies every single one of them.” As Obama is shown, the words “war on coal,” “Obamacare” and “massive spending and debt” appear in capital letters below him.

• Grimes spoke at a stop by Nuns on the Bus, a group of Catholic women religious "who advocate for justice and peace and encourage voter participation," Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service. Among her talking points, Grimes reiterated she stands for increasing the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, keeping health coverage through Kynect, and decreasing interest rates on student loan debts.

Campaign ads return to Medicare; Grimes opposes bill to arm anti-I.S. Syrians; parties send mail pieces

The ads are so thick, at times they're running back to back . . .

• "Alison Lundergan Grimes said Thursday she would vote against arming and training Syrian forces combating the Islamic State," Phillip Bailey of WFPL reports. "The Senate is scheduled to take up a vote on the measure this afternoon . . . Grimes said in a campaign statement she backs military action but could not support the measure until trust between the U.S. and Syrian rebels is clearly established."
• Grimes has a new one-minute TV commercial featuring her grandmother, Elsie Case, talking about how the grandfather's stroke affected her family's finances and claiming that Sen. Mitch McConnell voted to increase seniors' out-of-pocket medical costs. The McConnell campaign says the claim is false, citing fact-checkers' disputation of Grimes's first Medicare ad in July, but The Courier-Journal's Joe Gerth notes, "The claim made in the ad is similar to, but not the same as the claims made in ads that were debunked by non-partisan fact checkers." The votes cited were procedural votes on budget bills.
• McConnell responded with an ad about his help to a Laurel County constituent who was having a problem getting Medicare to pay bills.
• Gerth examines the ads from McConnell and Grimes featuring guns. "This isn't the first time Grimes and McConnell have sparred over guns," Gerth notes. "Grimes criticized McConnell after his appearance at an NRA event in March when he walked to the lectern brandishing a musket, an award for outgoing Sen. Tom Coburn, over his head. . . . She challenged McConnell to shoot with her on a firing range — a challenge to which he never responded. McConnell has refused to say if he owns a gun." Grimes's ad tries to separate herself from President Obama, and McConnell's reply ad notes that she endorsed the Democratic Party's platform when he was its nominee. "The Grimes campaign notes that she never specifically endorsed any of the provisions and, in fact, has consistently opposed Obama on them," Gerth writes. McConnell is also running a radio ad with essentially the same message.
• Fact-checkers have found fault with many ads, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, offering a roundup of some of their latest reports.
• The National Association of Realtors Political Action Committee is running a campaign of 30-second television commercials promoting Sen. Mitch McConnell as "a fighter for the middle class." PACs of lobbying organizations can give only $10,000 per election cycle ($5,000 each for primary and general elections) to candidates for the Senate or House, but there is no limit on what they can spend on advertising, and a meaningful statewide TV buy costs at least $200,000 a week. For a table of all reported spending in the race, from the Center for Responsive Politics, click here. UPDATE, Sept. 20: The Realtors are also sending a direct-mail piece advocating McConnell's re-election.
• The Kentucky Democratic Party is mailing an attack on McConnell's committee voting record ("skipped 93% of his senate committee meetings in the last five years") and his April statement that it wasn't his job to bring jobs to Lee County. (The McConnell ad that says his voting record is 99 percent was based on floor votes, not committee attendance.)
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  The Kentucky Republican Party is mailing an edited copy of Politico pages with the story about Grimes not mentioning coal at a June 9 fundraiser with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The envelope includes a printed note with what appears to be McConnell's handwriting, saying, "Really sums up the whole race." The same handwriting appears on the page: "Grimes said she'd stand up for us. But she said nothing."
• AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka "said Wednesday Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race is a top priority for organized labor that could define the country’s direction over the next two decades." Phillip Bailey reports for WFPL.
• Gerth writes about neo-Nazi write-in candidate Robert Randsell.

To Grimes ad, McConnell quickly counterattacks

A busy Tuesday . . .

• Sen. Mitch McConnell has a new ad, responding to Alison Lundergan Grimes' ad distancing herself from President Obama.
• Grimes's ad "is a continuation of what has become a central theme of Grimes' campaign: Telling voters who she isn't instead of telling them who she is," Sam Youngman writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "For more than a year, Kentuckians have heard Grimes say in every conceivable way that she is not McConnell, with cursory efforts to introduce herself or what she stands for — a couple of bio ads and a jobs plan short on specifics. . . . Meanwhile, McConnell's portrayal of Grimes as an appendage of Obama found a receptive audience in the eastern and western parts of the state, and polling shows that McConnell has amassed enormous leads in those regions."
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/09/15/3431013/sam-youngman-does-alison-lundergan.html?sp=/99/164/329/#storylink=cpy
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/09/15/3431013/sam-youngman-does-alison-lundergan.html?sp=/99/164/329/#storylink=cpy
• The "99 percent" voting record referred to in another McConnell ad is for Senate roll calls, his campaign says. The ad is a response to a Grimes ad saying he has missed 93 percent of Senate committee meetings since 2009.
• "Kentucky is arguably one of the health law’s biggest early success stories," but "There is little evidence that the expansion of health coverage will help Kentucky Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections," Abby Goodnough writes for The New York Times. "Despite his unyielding attacks on the law, Mr. McConnell also takes positions that suggest he knows it would be difficult to dismantle. He has hedged on whether he would take away Medicaid from new enrollees and suggested — without explaining how — that the Kynect marketplace could survive even if the law was repealed."
• The "hedged" line is based on a statement McConnell made to Times national political correspondent Jonathan Martin, who reported it in a collection of leftovers from reporting for his recent Times Magazine profile of McConnell: "When I pressed him about the politics of taking away Medicaid from those individuals that now have it, he suggested that was unlikely – even while still faulting Beshear for the decision. 'I don’t know that it will be taken away from them,' McConnell said of the expanded Medicaid coverage. Speaking about Beshear and Kentucky’s state government, he added: 'They’ve made the decision to expand it, they’re gonna have to pay for it.'"

Both candidates have shortcomings with voters in poll

By Cheyene Miller and Tyler Spanyer
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications
Information was also gathered by Paige Hobbs, Megan Ingros, Anthony Pendleton, Ben Tompkins and Brenton Ward.

Alison Lundergan Grimes is struggling to become familiar even to her fellow Democrats, but Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell may be losing touch with voters who have elected him to 30 years in the Senate, according to some Kentuckians who said they plan to vote in the Nov. 4 election.

Those were two findings of students in an advanced journalism course at the University of Kentucky, who recently had telephone conversations with some of the voters who were polled and agreed to follow-up interviews.

Some voters still don’t know who Grimes is, or what she stands for. “I just don’t know anything about her,” said a fellow Democrat, 49-year-old John Bartley of Owensboro. “With Senator McConnell you know what you are getting. Experience.”

Grimes must limit her losses among Democrats like Bartley, because polls indicate McConnell will do better among Republicans than she will among Democrats.

But McConnell has his own problems with voters like Chris Mason, 45, a Republican and member of the U.S. Army from Corbin, who said in the poll that he was undecided, and reiterated that in the interview.

“Typically I vote Republican,” Mason said, “but obviously I'm not all that wild about Senator McConnell.”

Mason also criticized Grimes, saying her television commercials have lacked substance. “The ads she's putting out aren't really doing much for me,” he said. “What I'm interested in is how is she going to help fix the problem? If she can't articulate to me how that problem is going to be fixed, then it'll be difficult for me to give her my vote.”

Grimes's self-promotion problem has allowed McConnell to paint her as an agent of President Obama, a tactic that appears to have worked on some Kentuckians. Some voters, like Janice Hirth of Covington, are purely basing their decision on their dislike of President Barack Obama.

“Senator Mitch has done a great job of connecting her with President Obama, who I really don’t like,” said Hirth, a Republican. “With nothing else to go on, I am using President Obama as my selling point.”

But some voters say McConnell shares blame for the recent gridlock in Washington. Democrat Michael King, 61, of Newport, said that McConnell “hasn’t shown enough leadership in Congress,” and “is part of the leadership that has caused the gridlock in the House and in Congress.”

Some Republicans say that, too. George Manning of Danville said he's voting for Grimes. “I’m registered Republican but I usually will pick a candidate by their issues, but this time, in that race, it’s simply because I don’t like him,” he said. “He does not have a reputation for bipartisanship, and there’s too much division between the Republicans and Democrats.”

Manning told the poll that he feels only neutral about Grimes, though: “I’m really not for her as much as I am against him,” he said. “I just don’t want to see him get it in there anymore. He’s made up this deal about war on coal and there’s not a war on coal, there’s a war on clean air.”

That's a minority opinion. The poll found that 75 percent of the self-described likely voters in the election believe there is a war on coal, making it one of the few issues in the race that seems to unite voters, even outside the state's two coalfields.

“I'm for Mitch McConnell,” said Republican Betty Bowling, a 70-year-old retired schoolteacher from Barlow.  “I appreciate that he's for coal in Kentucky.”

Bartley, who said he has worked as a coal-mine operator for almost 20 years, was quick to point out that despite being a registered Democrat he wants what’s best for his area and his family. And for him that means a more secure coal industry, and a vote for McConnell. “He understands how important coal is to us in Western Kentucky.”

In Eastern Kentucky's Wolfe County, conservative Democrat James Porter, 85, told the poll he was undecided but said in an interview that he is voting against Grimes rather than for McConnell because he fears Grimes will fail to support the Kentucky coal industry.

Some voters are going with a third-party candidate: Libertarian David Patterson, a Harrodsburg police officer, who got 5 percent in the poll to 46 for McConnell, 42 for Grimes and 8 percent undecided.

“I don’t know anything about Mr. Patterson [but] I used to be a supporter of Mitch McConnell and he voted for several things that upset me,” said Mary Dean, a retired registered nurse. “But then there’s Grimes and I absolutely refuse to vote for anybody that is going to support Obama. So that leaves me with this unknown fella, Mr. Patterson.”

Mason showed interest in Patterson, but thinks it would be a stretch for him to win: “He's probably got some fairly decent ideas, but unfortunately, in terms of where the two-party system is, I just don't think he's going to get very far.”

The Bluegrass Poll is conducted by Survey USA for The Courier-Journal, the Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville's WHAS-TV and Lexington's WKYT-TV. It was conducted Aug. 25-27. The poll's sponsors provided the UK School of Journalism and Telecommunications the answers from, and contact information for, voters in the poll who agreed to give follow-up interviews to reporters or student journalists.

MoveOn.org ad attacks McConnell for Koch remarks; his camp contrasts Jerry Lundergan's Obama views

MoveOn.org, which says it "campaigns for progressive change," has started advertising in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, with a 30-second spot about Sen. Mitch McConnell's remarks to a June meeting of big Republican funders hosted by brothers Charles and David Koch. The Grimes campaign has a 50-second web ad based on the remarks, touching more on the substantive issues at the end of the recording. UPDATE, Sept. 1: A second web ad came out Sunday.


Today, McConnell's campaign issued a press release saying the "Grimes camp" had undergone "a campaign conversion" on President Obama, contrasting the past favorable statements about the nation's top Democrat by Alison Grimes's father, Jerry Lundergan, with a quote from him in today's New York Times: “My daughter has never had a conversation with Barack Obama and probably never will, unless he wants to help Kentucky.” The release has no quotes from Grimes, but the Times story had one: “Kentuckians know how to do arithmetic, and they realize that the president has two more years left on his term and we are electing a senator for the next six.”