McConnell says he's against privatizing Social Security, but now he says Kynect really is only a website

A rolling roundup that will grow as the final weekend moves along . . .

• Sen. Mitch McConnell "said Friday he is not in favor of privatizing Social Security, even if he becomes the new majority leader of the U.S. Senate," Ronnie Ellis reports for CNHI News Service. “I don’t know anybody in favor of privatizing Social Security and I never heard anybody even suggest it, certainly not myself,” McConnell told reporters at an event in Lexington. For the previous week, he had declined to reveal what plans he might have for Social Security, and "Grimes’ campaign has criticized McConnell for what it says have been conflicting statements on measures to privatize Social Security, going back to the administration of Republican President George W. Bush," Ellis writes. "McConnell said it’s a standard Democratic practice to raise alarms about Social Security late in elections."
• McConnell went farther than he may have intended in talking to the editorial board of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville (which endorsed him) about the health-insurance exchange the state created under Obamacare, saying that "Kynect is a website. That's all it is." In the KET debate, McConnell only implied it was merely a website. To that, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, who created it, said: "Mitch told Kentuckians he'd keep the website up, while pulling the plug on federal funding, tax credits, and tearing down a marketplace that has made Kentucky a model of success for the nation." For the New Era's transcript of the interview, which was published last weekend, click here.
• Both campaigns are complaining about the other side's mailers. Grimes is suing the state Republican Party, and the McConnell campaign says it's exploring its legal options, Nick Storm reports for cn|2's "Pure Politics."
• In his column for The Courier-Journal, University of Kentucky journalism professor Al Cross looks back on 30 years of covering McConnell and wonders what he will do if he becomes majority leader, the post he has sought for so long.
• McConnell gave the weekly national radio address for the Republican Party, saying a GOP majority in the Senate could end Washington gridlock.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren returns; Grimes' ad on Paducah plant faulted; McConnell mum on Social Security plan

The final week begins . . .

Courier-Journal photo by John Sommers

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined Alison Lundergan Grimes for a rally tonight in Louisville, her second visit to the city for at attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell. "They repeatedly slammed McConnell for catering to the wealthy while opposing increasing the minimum wage, for opposing refinancing student loans and for opposing equal pay for equal work," Sebastian Kitchen reports for The Courier-Journal, adding that "a lively crowd of more than 400" was on hand. McConnell's campaign said Warren is wrong for Kentucky, calling Grimes' ties to the Massachusetts senator a "stark reminder of her loyalty to Obama." The campaign said Warren is a supporter of the war on coal, referring to her support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations to limit carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
• MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon reports enthusiasm for Grimes at an event in Calhoun, where "Grimes spelled it out: ‘I don’t have to pay you to be here.’" Carmon noted that "Grimes needs their enthusiasm, and their turnout muscle, if she is to upend the conventional wisdom that McConnell will hold on, and with him Republican control of the Senate." Carmon reports a crowd of of about 100 greeted Grimes in the town of 763.
• "A new TV ad by Alison Lundergan Grimes that attempts to paint McConnell as uncaring is disingenuous,” The Paducah Sun said in an editorial. “The ad, which began running in the Paducah market a week ago, claims McConnell did little to help workers” at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which enriched uranium for decades. The Sun says no one has worked harder than McConnell to help sick workers and keep the plant open. "Since 1999, Sen. McConnell has secured more than $1 billion in funding for the PGDP and its workers," the editorial said. The Sun goes on to cite numerous occasions of McConnell aiding the plant.
• The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee started a TV ad in which retired Louisville teacher Estelle Bayer says McConnell "voted himself six pay raises and made himself a millionaire, and he opposes raising the minimum wage?"
• The Grimes campaign announced today that Grimes has campaigned in all 120 Kentucky counties, wrapping up with Caldwell (Princeton). We were wondering why she went to several Republican strongholds in the last week or so.
• McConnell asked TV stations to stop running the Senate Majority PAC ad attacking him on Social Security, contesting its suggestions that he profited from insider trading. WDRB-TV in Louisville, which generally has a conservative editorial policy, pulled the ad but reinstated it, saying it found the assertions to be factual, and other stations are still running it, liberal columnist Greg Sargent reports for The Washington Post. "The dust-up shows that Democrats are pushing hard to make Social Security privatization a sleeper issue," Sargent writes. He notes McConnell senior adviser Josh Holmes told Brian Beutler of The New Republic, "I don't think anyone is interested in reviving the '05 debate," in which McConnell favored privatization.
• Ronnie Ellis of CNHI News Service reported after a McConnell rally in Campbellsville, "McConnell evaded reporters’ questions about whether as majority leader he’d support legislation to 'privatize' or change Social Security." On Thursday, "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,” Joe Sonka of Insider Louisville reported then, adding: "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."
• Ellis notes that Grimes says McConnell "supports tax breaks that encourage businesses to ship jobs overseas, but that message won’t get much support at Campbellsville Apparel, a textile company which supplies materials for federal government contracts and which employs a lot of folks who once worked at Fruit of the Loom — a company which moved jobs from Kentucky to Mexico." McConnell intervened to help the firm keep a federal contract, local officials said.

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: