You hate to throw the words "sore loser" around, but nothing that has been done by Kentucky Lt. Governor Dan Mongiardo, in the wake of his narrow defeat at the hands of Orange to Blue candidate Jack Conway, would dissuade anyone from using that epithet.
Consider last night's concession speech, where Mongiardo struck a tone that was, shall we say, a harbinger of what was to come:
Mongiardo would not say whether he will help Conway in the fall campaign against Republican nominee Rand Paul of Bowling Green.
I”m going to sleep ... get up in the morning, make some coffee and figure out what’s next,” he said.
He blamed the loss on last minute negative campaigning by Conway and a lack of funding.
One could have, perhaps, forgiven Mongiardo for being a tad embittered. He had an enormous lead in early primary polling, and it had to sting that the winner of the primary never actually led in any public polling on the race. Jack Conway's first lead, as it turned out, was the one that mattered the most.
It was the textbook example of being out-leaned at the finish line.
But that doesn't necessarily excuse this:
Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo’s U.S. Senate campaign said it will request a recanvass of voting machines and absentee ballots following his narrow loss to Attorney General Jack Conway in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
“The party deserves to have a clear winner so the nominee can begin moving toward the fall,” said Kim Geveden, Mongiardo’s spokesman.
Allison Haley, Conway’s spokeswoman, was stunned. “You’re kidding,” she said. “He conceded.”
It is one thing if, like Al Franken or Christine Gregoire, you request a recount in a statewide election where, out of millions of votes cast, the margin is a couple of hundred votes.
It is quite another if, in this case, the margin is nearly 3600 votes out of about a half million votes cast. Perhaps others have a more encyclopedic memory, but I cannot recall a recount being successful in an election where the margin of victory was in the four-digit range.
It is hard to know what Mongiardo is trying to accomplish here, other than a desperate "hail mary" in the hopes of a mis-tabulation somewhere. But, all in all, this reads like a low-percentage, to say nothing of low-class, play on his part.