Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Isn't Safe
In a year when Republicans find themselves facing surprisingly close congressional races all across the map, it is hard to think of anyone who would have seemed more unlikely for an upset, even a few months ago, than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. When he ran for a fourth term in 2002, McConnell barely broke a sweat, polling nearly 2-to-1 over his Democratic opponent. But as he told supporters this week: "Unlike six years ago, it's not going to be a coronation. It was fun getting 65 percent of the vote and carrying 113 out of 120 counties, but that was then, and this is now."
And the biggest difference between then and now, as any suffering Republican can tell you, is the economy, which is taking a particularly hard toll on a state that was already one of the poorest in the nation. Like voters around the country, Kentuckians are frustrated with Washington and the Bush Administration. As McConnell acknowledges: "The President is not popular. The economy is certainly slow." And the government bailout of Wall Street has given voters in Kentucky something else to be mad about. Since the financial crisis began to dominate the news last month, McConnell has seen his double-digit lead almost entirely evaporate. Polls now show the Kentucky Senate contest close to a dead heat.
Sensing sudden opportunity in a race they had all but written off, Democrats are now pouring in resources and lending national starpower to the campaign of Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is advertising in the state, and former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to campaign with Lunsford on Friday in Paducah and Bowling Green. His wife Hillary was there last month.
Lunsford would seem an unlikely giant-slayer or populist hero. He ran for Governor twice in the past five years, and didn't make it past the primaries either time. In his first bid, in 2003, Lunsford was forced out of the race even before the primary, when it came to light that some of the nursing homes he operated had turned away Medicaid patients. (Lunsford didn't endear himself to the state's Democratic establishment either, when he subsequently endorsed Republican Ernie Fletcher, the eventual victor, in that race — a move that he since has said was a mistake). When Lunsford jumped into the race against McConnell, it seemed the only thing he had going for him was the fact that he had a big enough bank account to fund it himself. Where McConnell's campaign has raised nearly $18 million, Lunsford had to loan $5.5 million to his.
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But no longer. McConnell — who is known for his bare-knuckle approach to politics — is fighting as hard as he ever has to hold onto his Senate seat. In recent days, the Republican leader has stepped up his assault against Lunsford with a line of attack that has echoes of 2003. McConnell's ads have featured veterans complaining about the care they got at Valor Healthcare, a company where Lunsford once served as CEO and where he still sits on the board of directors. In defense, Lunsford has produced testimonials of praise for the company's clinics.
He also enlisted two of the Democratic Party's most prominent disabled veterans. Former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee, campaigned with Lunsford last weekend at a VFW post in Frankfort, where he declared: "This whole attack on Bruce in terms of veterans' issues is a cover-up. It's a distraction from the fact that Kentuckians are hurting. They are suffering. They are hurting for jobs." Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Vietnam, is set to appear with Lunsford this weekend.
McConnell also is reminding Kentucky voters of all the pork he has delivered as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee — $500 million in the past year alone, he claims. That message, however, is sharply discordant with the top of the ticket, where John McCain is running on a promise to eradicate exactly those kinds of "earmarks." Lunsford, ironically, is the one who sounds more like McCain on this particular issue, saying that the federal projects that McConnell has delivered are "chump change" compared to the cost that Washington's insider culture has exacted on the state. He also is reminding voters of the role that McConnell has played in shepherding George Bush's economic agenda in the Senate, calling McConnell the President's "henchman."
Political handicappers still give McConnell the edge for re-election. But his race has become a symbol of the difficulties that confront Republicans up and down the ballot. And it's proof that in some election years, even a safe bet can suddenly turn risky.