Now this is getting interesting:
http://www.kentucky.com/...
With U.S. Sen. Rand Paul at his side, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took his coal bus tour to Western Kentucky Wednesday, railing against the Obama administration and defending his wife from criticisms that she is anti-coal.
McConnell was joined by Paul at three stops, but it was McConnell's other top surrogate — wife and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao — who reporters mostly wanted to ask about after each event.
Chao has moved front-and-center in the U.S. Senate race between McConnell and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in recent days, first after she was the subject of discriminatory comments by a Democratic strategist, then as the star of McConnell's latest television ad and most recently after a news report surfaced about Chao's service on the board of a charity that is trying to shut down coal-fired power plants.
McConnell was defiant as he was asked whether Chao would resign from the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies, saying "of course not — why should she?"
"She's pro-coal. She's in the same place I am on the NRA," McConnell said. "It's a big charitable board, but it's also got Jeb Bush on it. You think he's a Democratic sympathizer?"
"She's not going to resign," he continued. "They do a lot of good things. They do some things she does not approve of, and she doesn't approve of their efforts in the coal industry." - Lexington Herald-Leader, 8/13/14
It's McConnell's way of saying "fuck you" to Kentucky Democrats:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Eight Kentucky state lawmakers sent a letter to the president of the state’s coal industry trade association demanding that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife break ties with Bloomberg Philanthropies after a Yahoo News report detailed her association with the group, which is spending $50 million on an ongoing campaign to kill the coal industry.
Yahoo News reported on Friday that in 2012 McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, joined the board of directors of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which had announced a four-year, $50 million funding commitment to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” initiative a year earlier. The Sierra Club campaign’s stated goal is to "end our nation’s reliance on dirty coal, plant-by-plant, community-by-community, and state-by-state.” While Chao was not involved in the decision to fund the Sierra Club effort, her affiliation with Bloomberg Philanthropies led opponents of her husband to question why she would join an organization actively working against an industry whose health is so crucial to the state he represents.
McConnell, a Republican, is currently in a tight race for re-election against Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat. Both campaigns have aimed to highlight their support for the coal industry. McConnell, one of the staunchest defenders of coal in the Senate, has tried to tie Grimes with President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency’s ongoing lawsuits targeting coal plants.
The August 12 letter, signed only by Democrats, urged Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Bissett to join the clamor for Chao’s resignation from Bloomberg Philanthropies. - Yahoo News, 8/13/14
Despite how you feel about coal, this only hurts McConnell's argument against Grimes and makes her look more authentic:
http://www.usnews.com/...
Not only is Grimes distancing herself from the energy policies of Obama, who won only 4 out of 120 counties in the Bluegrass State in 2012, she’s attempting to beat McConnell at his own coal game. If McConnell is on the side of the industry, Grimes is comfortable taking her place alongside miners who work in the coal fields of the eastern and western corners of the state.
“When it comes to Kentucky coal miners, Mitch McConnell doesn’t care,” Grimes said over the weekend at the annual Fancy Farm picnic in the state. “I stand here today proudly, endorsed today by the United Mine Workers of America. They are standing shoulder to shoulder with me because they are tired of the hot air from Sen. McConnell. They are ready for a senator who will fight for their job and their black lung benefits.”
Some have pointed out that the United Mine Workers of America only represents a small minority of coal miners in the state and none in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky at all. Yet, the union gave Grimes the support of thousands of retirees and an open door to talk about coal on her own terms.
"She has to be deliriously happy that the United Mine Workers endorsed her," says Al Cross, a journalism professor at the University of Kentucky and an expert on state politics. "She needed some coal card to play and the UMW gave her one," - U.S. News, 8/8/14
By the way, McConnell's also been trying to hit back at Grimes on this:
http://www.courier-journal.com/...
Pushing back against attacks from Alison Lundergan Grimes on women's issues, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell called Tuesday for passage of a bill that would extend a program that pays to reduce the DNA test backlog in rape cases.
He was joined during a press conference at a Kentucky State Police crime lab in Louisville by anti-rape activist Debbie Smith, of Virginia, for whom legislation that sends millions of dollars annually to states to reduce that backlog, was named. The Debbie Smith Act is set to expire in September.
"He has been a huge supporter of this piece of legislation and I have been welcome in his office anytime I've asked for a meeting," said Smith, who was raped in 1989 but whose attacker wasn't known for six years because of a delay in DNA testing.
"He has been a true champion on this issue, working between the two houses and across party lines. He plays well with others," Smith said. "His commitment to this legislation speaks of his devotion to women."
Still, the issue is a thorny one to some degree for McConnell — as have been other women's issues — after a 30-year voting record that often puts his position on one bill in conflict with his positions on the same issue on other bills. - Lousiville Courier-Journal, 8/12/14
Not to mention, timing is everything because this just came out:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
PolitiFact is giving Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a "mostly false" rating for his claim that he voted for a stronger version of the Violence Against Women Act than the version backed by President Barack Obama.
The fact-checking project of the Tampa Bay Times examined a recent McConnell campaign ad titled "As Is," in which he claims that he "voted for even stronger protections than Obama's agenda will allow" when the Senate weighed in on VAWA last year. What the ad doesn't say is that McConnell actually voted against the version of VAWA that passed the Senate and went on to become law, and he instead supported a scaled-back GOP version of the legislation that left out key protections for LGBT, Native American and undocumented immigrant victims of domestic abuse.
PolitiFact tried to make sense of McConnell's claim:
Perhaps McConnell could argue that the mandatory minimum sentences Republicans required in their alternative made for a "stronger" bill, but advocates of domestic abuse awareness opposed this measure as unnecessary.
And the Republican measure was absent several protections for certain groups that were included in the bill Obama signed. McConnell is within his right to oppose those provisions, but it makes it hard for him to prove that he supported "stronger" legislation.
We rate the claim Mostly False. - Huffington Post, 8/13/14
Womp womp! I'll be interested to see how all of this plays out. But in the mean time, lets help Grimes get ready to win in November. Click here to donate and get involved with Grimes' campaign:
http://alisonforkentucky.com/