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.)
• 
  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.

As observers suggest different strategy for Grimes, new ad shows her saying she disagrees with Obama

New ads make news . . .

• Alison Lundergan Grimes has started a television commercial in which she personally makes explicit her differences with President Obama while she takes series of gunshots at clay pigeons and some verbal ones at Sen. Mitch McConnell. Grimes says "I'm not Barack Obama. I disagree with him on guns, coal and the EPA," the Environmental Protection Agency. She says McConnell "has done next to nothing" to save coal jobs. The 30-second spot ends with a still photograph of McConnell holding up a rifle at a Conservative Political Action Committee event this spring and Grimes saying "Mitch, that's not how you hold a gun." Earlier, she says "Mitch McConnell wants you to think I'm Barack Obama. Mitch is the same guy who thought Duke basketball players were UK." That's a reference to an early McConnell ad that used an incorrect photograph.
  UPDATE, Sept. 15: Grimes's campaign says the ad started Monday, but at least some stations started it Sunday. McConnell's campaign issued a press release noting that Grimes has raised money from and with supporters of new gun control measures.
• Bluegrass Rural, a super PAC with an Oakland, Ky., address, has bought some 60-second radio ads attacking McConnell for his votes for trade agreements and oil companies and against a 2005 bill to buy more armored equipment for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democratic activist Matt Barron of rural Massachusetts, who is involved in the effort, said the group was spending "four figures," or less than $10,000. His press releases say the trade and oil ads begin Monday on stations in Owensboro, Madisonville, Hartford, Glasgow, Bardstown, Liberty, Russell Springs, Mannsville and Mount Sterling. The military ad will run on stations in Lebanon Junction and Vine Grove, near Fort Knox; and Hopkinsville and Cadiz, near Fort Campbell. UPDATE, Sept. 20: Berry Craig writes about the PAC on Hillbilly Report.
• Ronnie Ellis of CNHI News Service writes of Grimes: "A plurality of respondents said they don’t know enough about her to form an opinion – providing McConnell with the opportunity to define her as 'Obama’s candidate.' . . . Maybe over the next two months Grimes needs to persuade undecided voters she’s more than just not McConnell."
• "Grimes might need campaign reset, observers say" is the headline over Joe Gerth's story in The Courier-Journal, which notes that the Bluegrass Poll "has seen her position erode by about 1 percentage point a month." The story quotes Democratic consultant Danny Briscoe as saying that Grimes needs to push a populist message and consider endorsing "the more popular parts of the Affordable Care Act." Al Cross explores the advantages and disadvantages of the latter idea in a column published online Saturday and in print Sunday.
• Gerth reports that the American Civil Liberties Union is objecting to KET's tightening of requirements for inclusion in its Oct. 13 Senate debate, which had the effect of exclusing Libertarian David Patterson. A KET spokesman said that was not the reason.
• Grimes doesn't support "fast track" trade authority for presidents, which McConnell favors, Kevin Wheatley reports for cn|2's "Pure Politics." Grimes told him that she appreciates business interests' “feeling and need to have fast-track approval because Congress isn’t working,” trade agreements “should be fair, especially for our American workers.” Wheatley notes Grimes is supported by labor unions, which oppose fast-track. "Grimes said in a statement emailed to Pure Politics after Saturday’s event that she would evaluate the final proposal 'to see if it is good for Kentucky workers and businesses based on these principles: Will it give Made in the USA goods and services a fair shot of getting into foreign markets or will barriers remain? Will new trading standards be strong enough on labor and legal requirements, or will they be like Chinese standards: filthy factories, sweatshop labor, and stolen patent rights? Will the U.S. and other like-minded countries be setting the rules on trade and commerce, or will it be taking the rules created by countries — like China — with command and control economies?'"

Group that favors taxpayer-funded campaigns starts running one-minute TV ad against McConnell

Rolling roundup for Tuesday, Sept. 9:

• In response to Alison Lundergan Grimes's TV ad saying he should be fired for missing the vast majority of his Senate committee meetings, Sen. Mitch McConnell today started an ad saying he has the power to appoint Senate committee members, "making sure Kentucky's voice is heard."
• A super PAC called Every Voice Action, which favors public financing of state and federal campaigns, to combat corruption, says it will spend at least $1 million on a "Big Money Mitch" campaign with a 60-second ad about McConnell's statement that "the worst day of my political life" was when President George W. Bush signed into law the McCain-Feingold law, "a bipartisan bill designed to rein in the power of large contributors."
• In a speech at Hopkinsville, Grimes criticized McConnell for “enacting the arbitrary and really mindless sequester cuts” that could cause a further reduction in military spending, affecting nearby Fort Campbell, Steve Breen reports for the Kentucky New Era. Asked what she would do about sequestration, which is designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, Grimes said, “We need to balance the budget the right way by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, spending smarter and making sure that we end the loopholes for the millionaires and billionaires and the tax breaks that Mitch McConnell has created.”
• McConnell is back in Washington, where the Senate is in session, probably for the rest of September. Grimes started a web ad accusing McConnell of dodging questions.
• In a tweet, New York Times national political correspondent Jonathan Martin asks, "If Grimes doesn't start moving #s by end of month, esp in E KY, does she start using Kynect (AKA: ACA)?" Al Cross, editor of this blog, replied, "I think so, and some in her camp have wanted to do that already," adding that pro-Obamacare ads by Democrats in Senate races in Arkansas and West Virginia could "show the way." Kynect is the state health-insurance marketplace created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Grimes, McConnell show some big differences in the closest thing yet to a debate in the race

By Megan Ingros and Al Cross
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Sen. Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes came the closest they have yet to a debate at the Kentucky Farm Bureau forum Tuesday, and their clearest differences on big issue were on health care and immigration.

Grimes was the most detailed she has been in a public discussion about health-care reform. Grimes indicated that she supports Kynect, the state health-insurance exchange, created by Gov. Steve Beshear and funded by Obamacare, where people sign up for Medicaid or buy insurance.

“For the first time ever, because of our governor, 500,000 Kentuckians are able to go to the doctor, their kids get checkups before school, and many of them are farm families in rural Kentucky,” she said. “The law isn’t perfect but we have to work to fix it. . . . We have to work to streamline the Affordable Care Act, to make sure there aren’t over-burdensome regulations on our businesses, especially our small businesses.”

Grimes endorsed President Obama’s delay in the law’s employer mandate and suggested that he should also live up to his promise that “If you like your doctor, you can keep it.”

She actually appeared to be referring to keeping old insurance policies, because her next words were, “We should be working to extend that grandfathering clause so we live up to that promise that Washington politicans made to Kentuckians. . . . It requires a senator, though, who doesn’t want to repeal root and branch the access to health care that Kentuckians just got for the first time.”

McConnell answered, “She won’t use the words, but she supports Obamacare, he single worst piece of legislation that’s been passed in the last half-century.”  He said Obamacare is going to cost jobs and it “ought to be pulled out root and branch and we ought to start over.”

McConnell said what should have been done is “truly national competition among health-insurance companies to keep prices down and quality up,” as well as “a national medical malpractice standard to bring some sanity to the litigation lottery that’s confronting every health-care provider in America; and thirdly, we need to allow small businesses to form groups for the purpose of more purchasing power on the open market.”

Citing a study by the Congressional Budget Office, McConnell said the law will only cover 10 million of the 40 million people who were uninsured, and will “cost 2.5 million jobs.” The study says the predicted reduction, through 2024, will come “almost entirely because workers will choose to provide less labor,” not because jobs will be eliminated.

McConnell said Kentucky will not be able to afford its expansion of the Medicaid program, which covers about three-fourths of the newly insured. “She applauds it,” he said. “It’s fine for the governor because the first three years the federal government will pick up 100 percent of the tab, but after that, the state’s going to be in serious financial problems.”

On immigration, Grimes argued that if McConnell hadn’t “stood in the way” of a comprehensive reform bill that passed the Senate but died in the Republican-controlled House, ”We might not see the crisis we see at the border today,” with unaccompanied minors streaming across.

Grimes endorsed the bill’s “pathway to citizenship,” but McConnell said only legal residency is needed to attract needed workers and “We shouldn’t do comprehensive; I think we need to bust it up,” into separate bills. “Obamacare was pretty comprehensive.” “We need to make changes, more merit based, to people who can immediately help our country, he said.

Grimes started out by saying McConnell had broken a promise to pass a farm bill last year, and said farmers were disadvantaged by the lack of a law for several months. McConnell said, “No one was disadvantaged by any of that.”

Grimes, who stood at a lectern to answer each question, repeatedly jabbed at McConnell for being a no-show at Senate Agriculture Committee meetings. McConnell, who remained seated while speaking, cited his awards from Farm Bureau for legislative accomplishments and said afterward, “She doesn’t really understand the legislative process,” in which party leaders “have more consequential things to do” than attend committee meetings.

In her opening statement, Grimes said if McConnell, “Never has a senator been paid so much to do so little for the people of Kentucky and it’s come at the expense of our farm families.” She ended her statement by saying, “It requires, members of the Farm Bureau, putting out to pasture a senator of the past.”

The candidates alternated answering first to a series of questions posed by Farm Bureau directors.

Asked about international trade and marketing, Grimes said, “I believe in free and open trade but it must be fair trade.” McConnell cited the lack of action on trade agreements under Obama and said, “The biggest winners of trade agreements are American agriculture and her supporters are totally opposed on everything you believe in on trade.”

When asked about fiscal policy and how they plan to balance the budget, McConnell said “The best answer to the deficit is to get the economy growing,.” and said that could be done by reducing the regulatory efforts of the Obama administration, which he said constitute the main reason that the economic recovery has been slow.

Referring to our national debt, Grimes said “There are 17 trillion reasons why Kentucky needs a new senator.” She said the country fought “two wars on credit cards” in Afghanistan and Iraq, referring to the deficits and debt built up after the tax cuts of the George W. Bush administration.

On tax policy, McConnell said he was responsible for getting a $5 million exemption in the estate tax, and then for making it permanent. Grimes said she is in favor of an additional $5 million exemption for agricultural estates. McConnell said he would “like to get rid of the death tax entirely.”

Both candidates said they are against expanded water regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, but McConnell said Grimes would enable those efforts because she would vote for Harry Reid as majority leader if she is elected.

Referring to Republican prospects of taking over the Senate, McConnell said he has a good chance of becoming majority leader. He made the case that he gives Kentucky “a distinct advantage” by being one of the only two Senate party leaders Kentucky has ever had, and can increase that as majority leader.

Grimes, slapping McConnell and Obama in the same passage, said "Washington isn't working for us. . . . He's the reason the mess exists. He's the reason the president is wrongly using executive orders."