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.

The man who made himself the third major player in the race wouldn't mind if candidates had more control

By Cheyene Miller
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

Scott Jennings, a man who has benefited greatly from the new era of campaign finance, says he wouldn’t mind going back to the old system, when candidates had the power.

Scott Jennings (Courier-Journal photo)

The former political director for Sen. Mitch McConnell ran two organizations that aired one of every seven television commercials in McConnell’s recent race with Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, delivering a one-two combination that made him the third major player.

But he told a University of Kentucky journalism class the covered the race that he would prefer a system where candidates had more control over paid messages than they do now.

“The system, as it has evolved since I first started in politics, now offers outside groups the opportunity to speak as much or more than candidates in some cases because of the contribution limits placed on campaigns,” Jennings elaborated in an email after speaking to the class.

“The current system almost guarantees that a significant amount of money will be spent in major elections on behalf of candidates who cannot legally control the message generated by that spending. I think democracy is more vibrant when people are free to speak in elections; I just think it's kind of silly that candidates themselves – the people brave enough to put their names on the ballot – can’t influence some of the messages that will ultimately be delivered to their benefit.”

Jennings’s two groups, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition and Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, spent at least $20 million in the Senate race, more than Grimes reported raising. 

He pointed out that this was the first campaign for a federal office in Kentucky since the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which gave corporations and unions the right to make unlimited campaign contributions.

He said the 2014 Senate race was comparable to the 2012 presidential election, in which each candidate had both a campaign committee and an affiliated “super PAC,” an independent political action committee that cannot legally coordinate with the campaign, but can raise and spend unlimited sums of money from both individuals and corporations on behalf of that candidate.

The exact amount Jennings spent is unknown because the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition is a social welfare organization, which under 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code cannot spend its money primarily on politics.  

Jennings said most of  the KOC’s money was spent on "issue ads," which don't call for viewers to vote one way or another and thus aren’t considered political.

As a 501(c)(4) organization, KOC does not have to reveal its donors, but Jennings said the vast majority of its money came from out of state. That was also the case with Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, which is registered under Section 527 of the tax code and does reveal its contributors.

The two biggest players for Grimes were the Senate Majority PAC, affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which spent a combined total of $7,830,234, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ compilation (at www.opensecrets.org) of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.  Jennings noted that out-of-state political operatives ran both committees.

"Combined, they got to roughly what Kentuckians for Strong Leadership spent,” Jennings said. According to opensecrets.org, KSL spent $6,409,617 on the race.

Grimes benefited from $1.34 million in labor-union spending, but it was fragmented, which Jennings said is one of the problems with outside spending. "It can become extremely ineffective," he said.

Jennings said that nationally, Democrats were more successful raising super PAC money. However, Jennings successfully played the role of third major player in the Kentucky race, Grimes campaign manager Jonathan Hurst told the journalism class this week.

Hurst said that while McConnell was focusing on defeating Tea Party-backed Matt Bevin in the Republican primary, the Grimes campaign had to deal with attacks from Jennings and his organizations, who were already pounding the idea of Grimes being President Obama’s Kentucky candidate. 

In Jennings, McConnell “had an ally, a third-party ally that could then come in and deal with us as he dealt with Bevin,” Hurst said. “It played a major part in the race.”

Jennings was so influential in the race that the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition became the focus of an Oct. 29 report from the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. It said “No other group has had a larger footprint in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race.”

Jennings said the campaign-finance landscape has changed greatly since his first campaign in 2000, and “I'm sure legislators and courts will wrestle with these questions again in the near future. For political operatives like me, you just play by the rules as they exist in any particular election.”

He added, “I strongly support the right of anyone to donate to political candidates and organizations. And I think it's a good thing when we have a free flowing marketplace of ideas.”

Getting down and dirty on Election Eve

Election Eve roundup, which will grow as the day goes along:

• "A stealthy coterie of difficult-to-trace outside groups is slipping tens of millions of dollars of attack ads and negative automated telephone calls into the final days of the midterm campaign, helping fuel an unprecedented surge of last-minute spending on Senate races," report Nicholas Confessore and Derek Willis of The New York Times. "Much of the advertising is being timed to ensure that no voter will know who is paying for it until after the election on Tuesday." The story doesn't mention Kentucky, but a friend of ours in West Kentucky, a white man in his early 60s, said he got about 10 phone calls Sunday, most favoring Republicans, including one with a woman's voice "threatening 'African danger' from Ebola and to vote against Obama," he wrote in an email.
• The Alison Lundergan Grimes campaign issued a web ad aimed at turning out women voters. It consists of a minute and 25 seconds of clips from Hillary Clinton's speech to a Grimes rally in Louisville, concluding with, "Let's put another crack in that glass ceiling and elect this incredible young woman to the United States Senate."
• Want a last look at Libertarian David Patterson? Benjamin Siegel of ABC News has a short story.
• The Election Law Society of law students at the University of Kentucky have started a blog related to the election and will set up in the law school's faculty lounge (Room 252) at 3 p.m. Tuesday to provide commentary and field questions through the evening.
• UK journalism professor Al Cross discussed the election with Bill Goodman on KET's "One to One" Sunday and John Gregory of the network has five major points from the conversation.

Grimes tears up as she talks about billionaires; Public Policy Polling has her 8 points behind

A Sunday evening roundup that will go into Monday . . .

• Alison Lundergan Grimes teared up today as she urged supporters to get out the vote to overcome the influence of "millionaires and billionaires," who presumably have financed the political committees that have put her at a decided financial disadvantage. “You, you are people who can’t be bought,” she told "the largely union crowd here, her voice breaking slightly and her eyes welling with tears," Jay Newton-Small reports from Henderson for Time magazine. The Grimes campaign circulated the story in a press release that said "Alison is leaving it all on the field."
• Grimes plans to stop Monday in Pikeville, Somerset, Bowling Green, Paducah, Ownesboro, Newport, Louisville (at the Center for African American Heritage), her birthplace of Maysville and her home town of Lexington. Sen. Mitch McConnell also has a fly-around to Louisville, Northern Kentucky, Lexington, Hazard, Paducah, Owensboro and Bowling Green.
• A survey taken Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 by Public Policy Polling showed McConnell with 50 percent, Grimes with 42 percent and 3 percent each for undecided and Libertarian David Patterson. The poll's error margin was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
• McConnell has bought more than $1 million worth of TV commercials "with four different closing-argument commercials — all with targeted messages aimed at appealing to the tastes of viewers in those individual Kentucky media markets," Manu Raju reports for Politico. The ads in Western Kentucky tout McConnell’s work for cancer screening treatments at an industrial plant in Paducah and helping with fishing rights, while the spots in Eastern Kentucky vow to win the “war on coal” and help displaced coal miners. In the Lexington and Cincinnati markets, the ads highlight McConnell helping a woman locate her abducted daughter. And in Louisville, McConnell promotes his efforts to help an aluminum plant that was shedding jobs while also saying he’s “inspired” by an activist helping women who were victims of violent crimes."
• If McConnell wins by a strong margin, he could have coattails that would turn the Kentucky House Republican for the first time since 1921 and perhaps guarantee passage of a "right to work" law that bans union contracts that require workers to pay dues or fees, Mike Elk reports for Politico. Several other Republican measures would be in play, University of Kentucky journalism professor Al Cross noted in his column last Sunday.

Poll gives McConnell clear lead; Republicans have outspent Democrats on TV by margin of nearly 3 to 2

Sunday is not a day of rest for campaigners and dedicated observers:

• A Marist College poll taken for NBC News Friday, Oct. 31 is the first reliable, independent poll to give Sen. Mitch McConnell 50 percent of the vote and a lead outside the margin of error. The survey gave Alison Lundergan Grimes 41 percent and Libertarian David Patterson 5 percent, with 3 percent of self-described likely voters undecided. The poll's initial question, about President Obama's job approval, may have skewed the results slightly; Obama's rating was 32 percent approval and 60 percent disapproval. McConnell's favorable-unfavorable was 44-49; Grimes's was 42-47. The poll's error margin was plus or minus 4.2 percent.
• "A senior party official" called McConnell "on Saturday at his Louisville home and, after running through voting projections, told Mr. McConnell that he would be the next majority leader. Mr. McConnell’s initial reaction was only a long pause," reports Jonathan Martin of The New York Times. McConnell has dreamed of being majority leader for a very long time, perhaps virtually all his adult life.
• Republicans have bought about 29 broadcast TV ads in the Senate race for every 20 commercials run by Democrats, according to near-final calculations by the Center for Public Integrity, reported by Adam Beam of The Associated Press. "Altogether, Kentucky's Senate candidates and interested parties have spent more than $33 million on TV ads, and that's a low estimate. It does not include the money spent on polling to come up with the ads or production costs to make the ads. And it does not include ads on local cable. McConnell's campaign has outspent Grimes' campaign by about $2 million. But the big advantage for McConnell comes from two super PACs, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition and Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, that have spent a combined $8.2 million on ads for McConnell. Grimes' biggest source of outside help came from the $2.4 million worth of ads from the Senate Majority PAC," overseen by Democratic Leader Harry Reid. For the latest data from the Center for Responsive Politics, click here.
• Here's an image of the controversial mailer that McConnell and the Republican Party of Kentucky sent to voters in Eastern Kentucky:
  
  
  Inside, the mailer says, "Dear Citizen: This document serves as a notification to you, as a resident of Kentucky and a registered voter in the aforementioned commonwealth, of fraudulent information that is being deliberately spread to voters in your area. The information that has been red-flagged as 100% false is being purposely spread by the campaign of the federal candidate named below: Alison Lundergan Grimes. With the campaign for United States Senate nearly complete, Alison Lundergan Grimes has chosen to launch an advertising campaign that independent sources prove is filled with blatant lies intended solely to deceive Kentucky voters." Grimes has filed suit seeking an injunction to stop use of the mailers. UPDATE, Jan. 26: In the Campaigns & Elections magazine contest, the piece "won five awards, including 'best direct mail piece for 2014,' Sam Youngman reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "The mail piece, produced by the Lukens Company, also won for 'best direct mail piece for Republican statewide candidate,' 'best mail piece for a bare-knuckled street fight victory,' 'toughest direct mail piece' and 'most daring and successful tactic'."
• Here's the inside of a mailer that the Kentucky Democratic Party has sent African Americans, promoting protests from the McConnell campaign:
  
  
Grimes's campaign said it would seek judicial action against the mailers.

As Grimes' odds lengthen, Hillary Clinton rallies supporters; reporters look at spending and lies

Hillary Clinton urged a crowd of 1,200 at Transylvania University in Lexington Saturday to work hard at getting out the vote for Alison Lundergan Grimes, who "will need every bit of that enthusiasm on Tuesday to have a chance at pulling the upset of the political cycle," Sam Youngman writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader, noting political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg's change in rating for the race, to "Republican favored" from "lean Republican." (Herald-Leader photo)

Earlier in the day, Clinton and Grimes rallied at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights. "This redundantly named city is a wonderfully symbolic place for the starting point of a campaign's final weekend," The Courier-Journal's James R. Carroll writes. If Grimes upsets Sen. Mitch McConnell, "She would be launched into the political heights in Kentucky and in Washington."

On the other hand, "McConnell's re-election, all by itself, would cement his place as one of Kentucky's most important political figures and extend his record as the commonwealth's longest-serving senator," Carroll writes. "McConnell at the very least would remain the leader of the Senate Republicans, a position that has given the Kentuckian the power to frustrate and derail many Obama initiatives. But if the Republicans do well in other states on Tuesday, McConnell would occupy that highest spot on Highland Heights, as Senate majority leader."

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., seems to think McConnell is going to win re-election, Niels Lesniewski reports for Roll Call. He told Iowa liberal activists in a phone call that “What [Republican nominee] Joni Ernst would mean, coming to the United States Senate, is that Mitch McConnell would be the leader of the Senate, someone who agrees with her on virtually everything,” Reid said.

In his Sunday column, The C-J's Joseph Gerth says $80 million will be spent on the race. "With all due respect to my friends in the television industry whose employers saw this election as a huge cash cow, it's a ridiculous amount of money that could have been spent in much more noble pursuits than making voters think the worst of one's opponent," Gerth writes, giving some examples, ending with: "It's $50 for every vote that is expected to be cast next week." He also says, "The Center for Responsive Politics reckons that $78 million had been spent by the middle of last week and that doesn't count the millions of dollars in 'issue' ads that are intended to influence the race but aren't counted in the total because they don't expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate. It will be among the most expensive U.S. Senate races in U.S. history and it will happen in one of the nation's poorest states."

John Cheves of the Herald-Leader picks "the seven biggest whoppers" of the race: McConnell's "Kynect is just a website;" Grimes's repeated claim that McConnell got rich from office; the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition's claim that Grimes supported "Obama's amnesty plan;" both sides' claims that the other would wreck Medicare; and both sides' claim that the other hates coal.

Carroll, Gerth and C-J colleague Tom Loftus report on the day's events and look forward to the end of the race: "Grimes will keep up with the blistering pace with a total of 23 stops in 21 counties between Saturday and Monday. The 72-year-old McConnell, on the other hand, appears to be coasting, with only 11 stops in 10 counties over that span — with most of those stops coming Monday when Sen. Rand Paul joins him on the trail."

Herald-Leader gives big play to nonprofit's story about 'dark money' group's big help for McConnell

Here's what we have time to post in a whirlwind of activity . . .

• A nonprofit group that was taken over by a former aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell has aired one of every seven television commercials in the Senate race, most of them attacking Alison Lundergan Grimes, with millions of dollars from donors it will not disclose, the Center for Public Integrity reports, in a story that the Lexington Herald-Leader placed on its front page. UPDATE, Oct. 31: National Journal's Alex Roarty and Shane Goldmacher show how the rules against coordination between such groups and candidates is easily circumvented.
• NPR reports that conservatives criticized McConnell for telling Neil Cavuto of Fox News that Republicans would not be able to repeal Obamacare because they will not have 60 votes in the Senate. "McConnell said that with a full Obamacare repeal impossible, he would instead push to repeal the law's tax on medical devices — which a number of Democratic senators already support — and to narrow its mandate on which workers must be covered."
• McConnell primary foe Matt Bevin "came as close as he has to endorsing" McConnell at a quiet gathering of conservatives in Jeffersontown Wednesday night, the Herald-Leader's Sam Youngman reports. "Bevin tried to warm up the subdued audience," saying that any thinking about voting for Grimes should "think again." He added, "There is nothing being brought forward by the Democratic Party in this state that is good for Kentucky. Nothing." Still, Youngman writes, "He continued to be cagey about backing McConnell. . . . Asked after his speech whether that was an endorsement of McConnell, Bevin snapped, 'You've got ears.'"
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/10/29/3508714/at-a-quiet-conservatives-rally.html?sp=/99/164/#storylink=cpy
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/10/29/3508714/at-a-quiet-conservatives-rally.html?sp=/99/164/#storylink=cpy
• Former president Bill Clinton is appearing in Louisville and Ashland today for Grimes. The first stop, at the Muhammad Ali Center, may help Grimes with African American turnout, which some black observers have said might be hurt by her refusal to say that she voted for President Obama; the second one will get coverage from West Virginia TV stations that serve the northern part of the East Kentucky Coal Field.
• The Economist sums up the race, largely by looking at McConnell as the leader of a potential Senate majority, "as seems likely." If so, "a man few Americans would recognise if he sat next to them on a bus, will be one of the most powerful people in the world," the magazine says in an editorial.
• Grimes pollster Mark Mellman, asked about the race at Bipartisan Policy Center event today, said "We’re not ahead. But we hope to be on Election Day." U.S. News & World Report's David Catanese notes, "Grimes’ team has furiously fought back at the notion that McConnell has pulled far ahead of them in recent weeks, but has not released its own internal polling by Mellman as it did back in September, when he showed the race tied."

Bill Moyers suggests McConnell's campaign and his allies are illegally coordinating their election activities

In the last week, roundups will change often, so keep us bookmarked . . .

• In an essay titled "How to buy an election," liberal journalist and commentator Bill Moyers questions whether Sen. Mitch McConnell has kept proper legal distance from "a constellation of outside groups" that are attacking Alison Lundergan Grimes in all sorts of advertising. He notes the senator's ties to several people who are playing key roles in those "supposedly independent" campaigns, like the one of the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, which has spent $12.4 million attacking Grimes, Joe Gerth of The Courier-Journal reports. "Often the sharing of consultants and ad makers means that any 'fire wall' is merely symbolic," Moyers writes. "But there have been no consequences for these potential violations of federal law, because there’s been no enforcement of the law, thanks to partisan gridlock at the Federal Election Commission," fostered partly by McConnell.
• Both candidates have started the traditional "closer" ads, in which they speak to the camera with a gentler message than most of their spots have delivered. McConnell has some real fun, ending with a bunch of bloodhounds to subtly recall the ads he rode to an upset victory over Democratic Sen. Walter D. Huddleston in 1984. It ends with him laughing, a rarity in an ad.
  

For an analysis of the Grimes ad, from Susan Davis of USA Today, click here.

Joe Arnold of Louisville's WHAS-TV reports on get-out-the-vote operations in both parties that may be the largest ever in Kentucky.

"Although they get little attention from candidates, white evangelical Christian voters are likely to be fundamental to any Republican victories in the key Senate races, especially in the South," Alistair Bell writes for Reuters. "Polling data shows evangelicals are more enthusiastic than the general population about the midterms," which Bell says "is striking given that Republican candidates have largely avoided evangelicals' pet topics like opposition to abortion and gay marriage for fear of alienating moderate voters." Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition says his group is doing its "most muscular" turnout operation ever. That includes voter guides like the one at the bottom of this blog post. CatholicVote.org, another pro-McConnell group, also has a guide.

The outcome of the race depends on whether voters have less trust in Congress or in President Obama, writes Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times.

Ever since Libertarian David Patterson got his name on the ballot, observers have wondered which major candidate he would hurt. Bill Hayes writes on his blog, The Rural Democrat, that it is likely Grimes, if Patterson gets 4 to 5 percent of the vote, because recent polling has shown him gaining support among self-defined independent voters and her losing support among that group.

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:
  
  

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.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee stops running ads in Ky.; Grimes reports $4.4 million on hand

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has stopped running commercials in Kentucky, "a severe blow to Alison Lundergan Grimes in her challenge to Republican leader Mitch McConnell," The Associated Press reports.

"That decision effectively leaves Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes on her own and is rightly read as a sign that national Democrats believe the race is effectively over," Chris Cillizza reports for The Washington Post, noting that Roll Call broke the story.

"One Democratic strategist closely following the Kentucky race insists that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) is still beatable but that Senate Democrats have to prioritize sitting senators at this point in the election cycle," the Post reports. "Another Democratic consultant tracking the McConnell-Grimes contest largely agreed, noting that pulling money out of Kentucky means 'You can play in Georgia, which is within the margin and the trend lines are going the right way, expand buys in Arkansas, Alaska, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa and Louisiana, which are all neck and neck, and then gamble on a wildcard like South Dakota.' . . . The reality of the Kentucky Senate race is that the electorate is simply locked in, polarized to the point where persuadable voters are non-existent."

The committee said in a statement, “The DSCC has now spent more than $2 million in Kentucky and continues to make targeted investments in the ground game while monitoring the race for future investments." The committee didn't start advertising in Kentucky until around the first of October.

"The ground game" is the effort to persuade and turn out Grimes voters through direct contact, mainly by volunteers. The DSCC is spending $60 million on that effort in 10 states, including Kentucky, MSNBC reports, calling it "a turbo-charged, data-driven ground operation that aims to ensure the 2014 electorate looks more like 2012—which saw massive turnout from minorities and young people—than the Republican wave election of 2010."

Still, AP's Adam Beam reports, "The committee's decision in Kentucky was in strong contrast to its activities in other states with pivotal Senate races. Democrats continued to spend freely in Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina and several other states as they tried to blunt a Republican drive to gain a we're confident our own substantial resources will be complemented by other investments in the closing days as this airtight race goes down to the wireSenate majority in midterm elections."

The Grimes campaign issued a press release saying it has $4.4 million on hand, "more than any other Democrat in a competitive U.S. Senate race," but spokeswoman Charly Norton said that was its Sept. 30 balance on the quarterly finance report that is due Wednesday. "We're confident our own substantial resources will be complemented by other investments in the closing days as this airtight race goes down to the wire," the release said.

UPDATE: Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that he raised $3.2 million in the third quarter and entered October with $5.2 million in the bank.
 

In hidden-camera videos, Grimes supporters undercut her coal stand; campaign says they're not on staff

By Anthony Pendleton
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes is the latest target of undercover video operator James O’Keefe, who has made a name for himself by going after Democrats and liberal activists.

On Monday, O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action released a hidden-camera video of Grimes campaign supporters that undercut Grimes’ strong advocacy of the troubled coal industry. Her campaign said none of the people are on its payroll.

In the nearly five-minute long video, the Grimes supporters has to say she supports coal because, as Juanita Rodriguez said, “In Kentucky, if you don’t support the coal industry, you’re dead – politically.” Rodriguez adds that politics is “a lying game, unfortunately.” The video identifies her as an “operative” of the Warren County Democratic Party in Bowling Green.

Former state auditor Crit Luallen is shown saying that Grimes has “just gotta do what she’s gotta do to get elected.” Luallen also says “Obama’s regulatory policies have had the impact totally restricting what coal can do.” She also suggests that the issue shouldn't be so big: “Between the market forces and what he’s already done, this is not like a big hook hanging over our heads.”

In a telephone interview, Luallen said, “It's my understanding that the campaign has said no one in that video had been authorized to speak for her. They were volunteers, they were activists, none of them were paid staff.” She added, “I deeply resent being secretly recorded. And this is a kind of underhanded tactic that is unnecessary in the campaign environment and doesn't serve the positive public discourse that needs to happen in the campaign.”

Luallen said in an email to the Bowling Green Daily News, “I’ve known Alison a long time and I know she cares deeply about coal miners, their families and their futures.”

Ziya Smallens, whom the video identifies as a field organizer at a “Louisville Democratic office,” says in the video, “You can’t be a statewide politician and condemn coal. You can’t. You’re not gonna win.”

O’Keefe says in the video that he sent his “reporters into the Grimes campaign,” and to “Grimes campaign offices across the state,” but most if not all of the locations appear to be offices of the Democratic Party, not the Grimes campaign.

Asked about that in an interview, O'Keefe said, "That's where her campaign activities are carried out, were in these offices. So whether they're staffers or campaign workers or officials associated with the campaign - that's sorta why we used that language."

In an email, Grimes campaign press secretary Charly Norton said, “None of the individuals in the video are on our staff.”

However, it appears Smallens may have been a member of the Grimes campaign in the past. On Tuesday, his LinkedIn profile said he was a field organizer for the campaign. One of the duties Smallens listed was being in charge of or helping with “training volunteers to organize their own communities.”

O’Keefe said in a telephone interview that he described Smallens as a field organizer because “they characterized that they were working for the campaign, in the capacity as field organizer.”

On Wednesday, Smallens’s LinkedIn profile had been updated and all mentions of the Grimes campaign had been removed. Less than an hour after an email was sent to Smallens seeking comment for this story, his profile had been completely deleted.

No payments to Smallens or another person the video identifies as a “Grimes field organizer,” Chase Sanders, are listed in payments made by the Grimes campaign in its reports through June 30. Smallens’ LinkedIn profile said he started work in June. Another campaign-spending report, for the third quarter, is due Oct. 15.

On Tuesday, Project Veritas Action released a second video, showing Grimes campaign donor Niko Elmaleh of New York City in a bar, saying of the coal indstry that Grimes will “[expletive] ‘em as soon as she gets elected.”

After the release of the first video on Monday, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign spokeswoman, Allison Moore, said in a press release, “The fact Grimes has not denounced campaign staffers who say she’s anti-coal is just the latest proof that Obama’s Kentucky candidate is no more interested in defending this industry than she was the day she lied about raising the subject at a Harry Reid fundraiser.”

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, is the Senate majority leader. In 2008, he said “Coal makes us sick.” In June, Grimes said she would defend the industry at a private fundraiser Reid sponsored for her, but in her 11-minute speech, she never said the word “coal.” She said afterward that she raised the issue with Reid privately.

Grimes has said that unlike McConnell, she believes in global warming and climate change, "but I think that we have to address, especially, leaving this world in a better place in a balanced manner. We’ve got to keep the jobs that we have here in this state, especially our good coal jobs, fight for them. But we have to diversify our economies in Eastern and Western Kentucky."

On Wednesday morning, after the release of the second video, the Republican Party of Kentucky released a statement calling on Grimes to return the money her campaign received from Elmaleh. He donated $2,600 – the maximum amount for a single election – in June.

O’Keefe says in the video that it is “the beginning of a nationwide undercover investigation into the upcoming election.”

O’Keefe is the head of Project Veritas Action – a non-profit “social welfare organization” organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the main requirement to be classified as a 501(c)(4) is to “operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community.” That has been interpreted to mean that such groups are within the law if they spend half or less of their money on politics.

O’Keefe first gained fame, and is mainly known, for a series of hidden-camera videos released in 2009 that helped to bring down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. In those videos, ACORN employees offer advice to O’Keefe and Giles on how to evade tax laws. The video gained attention because it showed O”Keefe and Giles dressed as a pimp and prostitute in certain parts. It was discovered nearly a year later that the two were not in costume in the ACORN offices as originally thought.

Although it took nearly a year to catch O’Keefe’s deceitful conduct the first time, it took less than a day the second time. O’Keefe and three others were arrested by the FBI in January 2010 for breaking into Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office. All four were initially charged with “entering federal property under false pretenses and with the intent of committing a felony.” Their sentences were dropped to misdemeanors; O’Keefe served three years of probation and 100 hours of community service.

Post calls 'whopper' Grimes' reply to McConnell coal ad; Lex. chamber sets separate events with candidates

A rolling roundup with four weeks until Election Day . . .

• Alison Lundergan Grimes is running a television commercial, targeted to coalfield audiences, that tries to refute Sen. Mitch McConnell's ad claiming that she is funded by foes of coal by saying McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, "took $600,000 from anti-coal groups," making him the only candidate "pocketing money" from coal foes. "This is a fairly misleading and flimsy ad," writes Glenn Kessler, "The Fact Checker" for The Washington Post. "In both instances, policies were undertaken before Chao joined the respective boards—and in any case, the boards of directors had no input in developing those policies. . . . What did McConnell hve to do with any of this? Nothing." Kessler gives the ad four Pinocchios, which he reserves for "whoppers." Here's the ad, captured from WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W.Va., which serves much of Eastern Kentucky; Kessler notes that it's not on the Grimes campaign's YouTube channel, "which is often a sign a campaign wants to slip something under the radar."
  
• Ed Kilgore of The Washington Monthly looks at the latest Bluegrass Poll and writes, "This poll will likely be treated as an outlier by most observers, albeit one that reminds us this is a pretty close race by any measurement. It also contains one chronic seed of doubt that keeps Kentucky in the back of the mind as a late upset possibility." He quotes Sahil Kapur of Talking Points Memo: "Perhaps the most alarming number for McConnell is that 57 percent of registered voters surveyed said that after 30 years in office, it’s time for him to be replaced. That sentiment was shared by 33 percent of conservatives and 27 percent of Republicans."
• The two major Senate candidates are scheduled to appear at chamber-of-commerce events in Lexington in the near future at the Griffin Gate Marriott Resort in Lexington.  McConnell will appear Friday, Oct. 10 from noon to 1:30 p.m. for a luncheon.  Grimes will attend a breakfast at the same location Wednesday Oct. 15 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. The events are sponsored by Commerce Lexington, the Lexington chamber of commerce. To attend, email rsvp@commercelexington.com or register online at that site.
• The American Optometric Association has joined the list of lobbying groups advertising for McConnell, with a 60-second radio ad that also promotes optometry.

Grimes uses pro-debate theme in east, won't say if she voted for Obama; McConnell equivocates on climate

Catching up when we can, gradually, with a few items we have missed . . .

• Alison Lundergan Grimes kicked off a tour of Eastern Kentucky in Morehead with a new theme called "I challenge Mitch," reports Lana Bellamy of The Independent in Ashland. The theme is based on Sen. Mitch McConnell's willingness to have only one true debate (Oct. 13 on KET) and Grimes's wish to have one in Eastern Kentucky, a region where McConnell has undermined the traditional Democratic base with attacks on President Obama and his coal policies. At this point in the race, a month before the election, a debate would be difficult to schedule.
• The race "will likely be the most expensive Senate race in history, it has featured some of the silliest ads and stupidest controversies, and it features one of the most unpopular-yet-routinely-successful incumbents in the country," Jaime Fuller writes for The Washington Post, as a way of introducing excerpts from Alec MacGillis's new e-book, The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell. It "serves as a great reminder of how McConnell became the Senate leader he is today, and how much every elected official tends to change the more they learn about Washington and their polarized constituents," Fuller writes, listing six "things we knew but forgot about Mitch McConnell," based on the book. Here are three of them: "He used to be more moderate. ... He knows how to make a great campaign ad. ... The more he's learned about fundraising, the more he's grown to hate limits on spending." The last point cites two major flips in his positions on campaign finance during his career.
• Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader said on KET's "Comment on Kentucky" that there has been a tendency "by some of the national press to sort of write off Kentucky, take it off the radar screen. That's a mistake." He noted Democrats had made "two significant investments" in the race: the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee putting $1.2 million into ads, for a total of $1.7 million; and the announcement that Hillary Clinton will campaign for Grimes, at a date to be announced.
• Reporting on McConnell's fundraiser with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Thursday night, Youngman writes that the senator "seized on remarks made earlier in the day by President Barack Obama," that all his policies are on the ballot, saying, "I couldn't agree more."  Youngman notes that tying Obama to Grimes "has been central to McConnell's campaign strategy, and Grimes has struggled to distance herself from the president, refusing three times Thursday at an event in Lexington to say whether she voted for Obama in 2012." UPDATE: On Sunday, former Obama adviser David Axelrod said the president's comment was a mistake.
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/10/02/3460214/after-romney-endorses-mcconnell.html#storylink=cpy
  
  Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/10/02/3460214/after-romney-endorses-mcconnell.html#storylink=cpy
• "McConnell told the Cincinnati Enquirer's editorial board on Thursday that he doesn't know if climate change is a real problem because he's 'not a scientist' and that he's more interested in producing cheap energy than worrying about it," Joe Gerth reports for The Courier-Journal. "McConnell told the editorial board that he didn't even want to talk about limiting carbon emissions because 'nobody else is going to do that,' he said." Gerth reports otherwise: "In fact, the United Nations is on schedule to approve a new agreement on climate change next year. And while the Chinese are building new coal-fired power plants, they are also investing in alternative energy sources. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that China is also banning certain types of highly polluting coal in an effort to clean up its air."

Groups say they'll protest Romney, McConnell; Grimes starts TV ad with Bill Clinton; McConnell ad has miner

There's a lot more going on than we have students willing or able to write about it . . .

• Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is scheduled to attend fund-raising events Thursday in for Sen. Mitch McConnell. The private fundraiser will be held at Donamire Farm on Old Frankfort Pike in Lexington. In an advisory sent to the news media, activists said they would gather to protest outside the fundraiser. According to the advisory, the protesters will be members of People for the American Way, the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org and CREDO Action. The activists are expected to protest McConnell's support of the wealthy and push for a stronger voice for average citizens.
• Former president Bill Clinton is appearing in a television commercial for Alison Lundergan Grimes, who has campaigned with him twice in Kentucky and is expected to host him again. The 30-second spot shows footage of their campaign stop in Hazard. UPDATE, Oct. 2: John Harris of Politico writes of Clinton and his wife, "The Clinton Brand of 2014 is missing three key elements that vaulted Bill Clinton to power in 1992. First was new ideas. Second was an authentic populist connection. Third was the idea of generational change."
• McConnell is running an 30-second TV ad featuring Chris Sexton of Letcher County, who says he "got laid off because of the war on coal" and retrained as an emergency medical technician in a program McConnell helped fund. The McConnell campaign has not responded to a requst for documentation of Sexton's claim.
• The National Rifle Association, which started a TV ad last week calling for defeat of Grimes, has added one calling for McConnell's election, as well as a 60-second radio commercial that alleges Grimes supports the "gun control agenda" of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The only gun measure Grimes says she favors is background checks for gun purchasers at gun shows.

Grimes campaign stresses importance of quarterly campign-finance reporting deadline tonight

Part of a Grimes campaign email

With the quarterly deadline for campaigns to report financial contributions, the Alison Lundergan Grimes campaign has been ramping up their fundraising efforts as the deadline nears. Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports,"In the 72 hours prior to the midnight Tuesday deadline, Grimes sent at least 10 fundraising emails, some arriving in inboxes less than two hours apart." Youngman went on to quote a Grimes campaign email: "This deadline matters. After today, we'll make our final decisions about how to invest our resources and put ourselves in the best position to win on November 4th." Grimes has raised less money than Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose allies are on target to spend $20 million on his behalf.

McConnell flips, says he would allow wage vote; his friends spend heavily on TV; Patterson sues KET

As we hit the five-weeks-to-election mark, Republicans raise the ante . . .

• Sen. Mitch McConnell released a one-minute television commercial today with a moving narration from Dr. Noelle Hunter of Morehead, whose daughter was abducted and taken to Africa by Hunter's ex-husband. Hunter says McConnell helped get her daughter back and took a personal interest in the case. The ad seems to appeal to women, whose votes have been more up for grabs than those of men. "The commercial seeks to both humanize McConnell and to show that he is effective — two central goals in the home stretch for an incumbent whose personal favorability ratings lag behind the state’s partisan lean," James Hohmann writes for Politico.
• Two political committees closely tied to McConnell "are poised to spend nearly $20 million on television advertisements to sway Kentucky voters," The Associated Press reports. "That's a staggering amount for a single race and a textbook example of the use of outside money in a tight contest. The effort began more than a year ago. But the majority of the advertising by the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition and Kentuckians for Strong Leadership has aired since McConnell and Democratic rival Alison Lundergan Grimes won primaries in mid-May. . . . A spokeswoman for Grimes says McConnell's millionaire and billionaire cronies have targeted the race more than any other, but predicts they will fail."
• Ronnie Ellis of CNHI News Service reports that McConnell said Friday that if he becomes majority leader "He will impose order on the way the Senate functions, reinvigorating the committee system and allowing members to file amendments and cast votes on bills," including an increase in the minimum wage. "Those comments might be viewed as contrary to others McConnell has made," including a meeting of conservative campaign contributors, where he said “We’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage.” Ellis writes, "McConnell bristled when asked if those comments conflicted with his assurance that he’d restore order to the Senate." He cited a January speech in which he said senators' constituents should “know where we stand on the issues of the day, regardless of whether the majority party thinks those issues are worth debating or voting on.” Asked if that meant he’d allow votes on such things as the minimum wage, he replied “Yes.” That is "the exact opposite of what McConnell told the Koch brothers and their allies," MSNBC's Steve Benen writes.
• Today Alison Lundergan Grimes's campaign launched #AlisonCares, "a campaign initiative that will continue the campaign’s overwhelming online engagement with grassroots supporters," the campaign said. The candidate's husband, Andrew Grimes, does the first video. "Grimes' social media effort is an effort to reach out to non-traditional voters who don't get news and information from television and to let them know what she will do in the Senate if successful in ousting McConnell," writes Joe Gerth of The Courier-Journal. "It's pushing the ads to voters using Facebook and Twitter."
• Libertarian candidate David Patterson "has asked a federal judge to order Kentucky Educational Television to include him in the station's televised debate on Oct. 13," AP reports. "His lawsuit alleges KET officials are excluding him from the debate because of his political views—something the U.S. Supreme Court has said public broadcasters cannot do." AP tightened its qualification requirements in July, before Patterson gained enough signatures to get on the ballot but after his effort was publicized.

Roundup: With just over five weeks to go, polls and media illustrate Grimes's challenge

Things don't seem to be looking up for Alison Lundergan Grimes . . .

• "Is Grimes campaign sputtering in final stretch?" asks the headline over Joe Gerth's Sunday column in The Courier-Journal. Gerth notes independent polls showing the Democratic nominee trailing Sen. Mitch McConnell by 4 to 8 percentage points in recent weeks, but suggested that the Grimes poll showing her leading by 1 point could be valid because "the campaign has been micro-targeting young voters who don't have a strong voting record but who have come out to vote at some point over the last few years" and could be including more of them in its polling.
• "Grimes's biggest problem may be that she's not just battling McConnell but she's also battling the super PACs and special interest groups that are on the air backing McConnell and attacking her in greater numbers than ever," Gerth writes. "She's now seeing ads against her by the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, the National Rifle Association and a federal credit union political action committee. Kentuckians for Strong Leadership and Rove's Crossroads GPS have also bought ad time in the state" for McConnell. So has the National Association of Realtors.

McConnell relies more on PACs, other big contributors; Grimes gets more from small givers

About 85 percent of the $37 million in identified contributions for the Senate race has come from outside Kentucky, Tom Loftus reports for The Courier-Journal after an exhaustive analysis of their finance reports.

Sen. Mitch McConnell gets much more from political action committees of Washington lobbying interests, and much less from Kentuckians small contributors whose names don't have to be disclosed because that had given less than $200 before June 30, the end of the last finance reporting period. Another period ends Tuesday, with a report due Oct. 15. However, because senators have resisted making their Federal Election Commission reports electronic, data from the last reporting period won't be available until several days after that deadline.

The totals reported by Loftus include money given to two independent PACs, one supporting McConnell and a smaller one supporting Grimes, and McConnell's personal PAC. They did not include the Senate Majority PAC, which the Center for Responsive Politics says has spent $4.3 million attacking McConnell.

"McConnell, who started raising money shortly after his last re-election six years ago, is getting big money from the Washington network of PACs and lobbyists, Texas and New York," Loftus reports. "Grimes, who entered the campaign in July of last year, gets support from the California film industry, but also New York and Washington." However, McConnell raised more from California, $1.7 million, than Grimes.

The Courier-Journal's package includes an interactive table to look up contributors and their contributions.

Where the race stands, six weeks before the election

By Anthony Pendleton and Megan Ingros

University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

Information for this story was also contributed by Paige Hobbs, Cheyene Miller and Tyler Spanyer.

In less than two months, Kentucky voters will head to the polls to vote in the election for the U.S. Senate. Incumbent Republican Mitch McConnell is facing off against national Democratic newcomer Alison Lundergan Grimes.

This is arguably the most important and most-watched race in the nation. McConnell, 72, is the Senate minority leader, meaning he’s the top official of the party that has fewer members in the Senate. He is expected to become majority leader if the GOP wins enough seats to take control of the chamber.

Grimes, 35, would be Kentucky’s first female senator, and the state’s first Democratic senator since 1999. She is Kentucky's secretary of state – a position she won in 2011, her first elected public office.

             As the state’s chief election officer, Grimes got the legislature to approve changes to help overseas military voting, but the new law does not allow soldiers to vote electronically, as she wanted. Grimes also started a program that allows victims of domestic violence and sexual assault to "remove their addresses from public voter registration records in an attempt to stay safe from their abusers," as described by the Lexington Herald-Leader.

             McConnell says his leadership job puts him in the middle of every big decision in Washington, and that he will be even more powerful, as majority leader, if Republicans take control of the Senate. Grimes wants McConnell’s long history in Washington to be viewed as a liability, by painting him as an architect of Washington gridlock.  

             Over the course of his nearly 30-year Senate career, McConnell is best known nationally for his fights against limits on campaign contributions and spending. In a secretly recorded talk in June, he said the 2001 passage of the McCain-Feingold law limiting donations to political parties was “the worst day of my political life.”

             McConnell’s big issue in this race has been coal, blaming Environmental Protection Agency regulations for the loss of mining jobs in Eastern Kentucky. Disinterested observers have noted other factors, especially cheap natural gas that has displaced coal as an electric-generating fuel.

             McConnell has identified Grimes with President Obama, who is unpopular in Kentucky, based largely on her statement during her 2011 campaign that she supported the national Democratic platform. That seems to be working for him, as he has built leads in coal-bearing Eastern and Western Kentucky.

Grimes has replied with an ad saying “I’m not Barack Obama. I disagree with him on guns, coal and the EPA.” She also talks about coal miners’ safety and health, and her campaign has called McConnell’s record on those issues “deplorable.”

             The underlying issue is jobs. Kentucky’s unemployment rate remains higher than the rest of the country, and both candidates promise to promote job growth in the state.

Grimes has tried to make much of McConnell’s remark, when asked in Beattyville what he would do to bring jobs to Lee County, that “Economic development is a Frankfort issue. That is not my job.” McConnell has said he was in Beattyville to discuss jobs, and did so in a speech after the reporter left.

Grimes has focused on economic issues such as equal pay for women -- but has been unable to keep a clear lead among female voters – and raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour over three years, from $7.25.

McConnell, citing a report from the Congressional Budget Office, has said raising the wage to that level would cost half a million jobs, but has also said there might be circumstances in which it could be raised, after the economy improves more.

McConnell wants to repeal the federal health-care reform law while Grimes wants to delay its coverage mandate and make other changes. She says McConnell’s approach would risk the coverage of 521,000 people who have obtained it through the state exchange established under the law.

On immigration, Grimes supports the bipartisan, comprehensive reform bill that passed the Senate and would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. McConnell has said only legal residency is needed to attract needed workers, and immigration reform should be done through separate bills after the border is secure.

Grimes and McConnell have had one joint question-and-answer session, before directors of the Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation. KET will host a debate between them Oct. 13. The debate will not include Libertarian David Patterson, a 43 year-old Harrodsburg police officer who didn’t get his name on the ballot until August.