BY AL CROSS
This column was written before Tuesday night’s debate among four candidates in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.
“Kentucky is in play this year. Believe it,” U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath told her email list last week. Perhaps she felt obliged to add those two words because so few people think Democrats have a chance to win the seat of retiring Republican Mitch McConnell.
McGrath, primary front-runner Charles Booker and other Democrats have to insist they’re not on a fool’s errand as they try to raise money and support in a state that last elected a Democratic senator 34 years ago and gave President Trump 30-point margins. But they’re not without talking points.
They can argue, with fresh evidence, that Trump’s influence is waning, even as the most prominent Republican candidates compete to see how far they can stick their noses up his hindquarters. Sixth District U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and businessman Nate Morris are ready targets for Democratic attack ads saying they would be rubber stamps for the president. “I’ll always stand with Trump,” front-runner Barr vows in TV ads.
Kentuckians don’t want a rubber stamp. Last week’s Emerson College poll asked likely primary voters if a Trump endorsement would make them more or less likely to vote for that candidate; 28.6% said more likely and 39.4% said less likely.
That reflects the poll finding that Kentucky has more anti-Trump Republicans (the 13% who said “less likely”) than pro-Trump Democrats (7% who said “more likely”). And the anti-Trump vote is actually larger, because the poll didn’t measure independents, who can’t vote in Kentucky primaries and are shunning Trump nationally.
The election will be a referendum on Trump, but that’s not all. It will also be Kentuckians’ choice of the direction the nation should take. This is a conservative state, and Booker is an outspoken liberal (as is state House Minority Leader Pam Stevenson, who’s polling at 3%). We are highly unlikely to elect a senator who favors a guaranteed minimum income, abolition of ICE and other left-wing causes. And, sad to say, our lingering racism makes a Black liberal’s election all the more unlikely.
“Obviously, he’s gonna be a longshot,” former 3rd District Rep. John Yarmuth said as he explained his recent endorsement of Booker, announced in a press release: “Out of the entire field, Charles is the only person poised to build the coalitions needed to win in November.” McGrath can’t do that, Yarmuth told me, because she has “proven that she cannot run an effective campaign. She’s never been able to make a case as to what she’s for, and I have yet to run into any Democrat who’s excited about her candidacy.”
Booker has all the excitement so far, reflected in his labor-union and activist-group endorsements and his growing lead over McGrath: 36% to 18% in the poll, up from 30-19 two months earlier. McGrath can’t seem to shake the label of two-time loser as a Democratic nominee – to Barr in 2018 and to McConnell in 2020, despite raising $93 million.
Booker is also a two-time loser, to McGrath in the 2020 primary and to Sen. Rand Paul in 2022. But there seems to be a sense among Kentucky Democrats that McGrath let the party down and doesn’t deserve a third strike. But unless fellow moderate Dale Romans (polling at 2%) miraculously jump-starts his campaign, McGrath is the only realistic chance Democrats have. As the Iran War looms larger in the race, her record as a Marine fighter pilot gives her an opening for another look by voters.
Former Lt. Gov. Crit Luallen said McGrath has improved her campaign style and hired better advisers, including Gov. Andy Beshear’s media team. “She’s not a perfect candidate, but she has had the courage to step up, knowing how she would be attacked and maligned,” Luallen said. But McGrath and her team will have to run an exceptional campaign in the next six weeks to catch up to Booker, who is an inspiring campaigner. As Yarmuth says, “He knows what he stands for.”
Democrats have a better chance to pick up Barr’s seat, for which both parties have primaries. Former state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson has support from the AFL-CIO and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, and former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo has out-raised the five-candidate field with help from Louisville activist Christy Brown. Former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, one of three major Republican candidates, is the first in the 6th to start TV ads, and he says “Being with President Trump from the beginning means I’ll be with him ’til the end.” That’s very close to saying “always,” as Barr does, but Alvarado refers to his support of Trump in three elections. Perhaps he wants to keep Democrats from credibly calling him a rubber stamp.
Al Cross has covered Kentucky politics for more than 50 years. The Northern Kentucky Tribune is the home for his column, which is offered to other publications with appropriate credit.