Despite Hollywood actress Ashley Judd’s high-profile political rollout, national Democrats appear to be looking for an alternative Senate candidate in Kentucky to challenge Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell next year. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for instance, has remained cool to a Judd candidacy. DSCC executive director Guy Cecil told ABC News that Judd is just one of “a handful of quality candidates in Kentucky” and that there is a “deep bench” of challengers to McConnell. Meanwhile, former Democratic senator Wendell Ford recently met with Judd but said the Democratic party might be able to run a “better candidate” than her.
That lead Louisville political columnist Nick Storm to speculate whether Ford and Bill Clinton, the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Kentucky, are “holding out” their support for someone else—someone like 34-year-old secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes. Clinton met with Grimes last week in Owensboro, Howard Fineman reported, to “privately advise” her about her political future. Clinton had written Grimes a personal check for her 2011 race for secretary of state.
Who is Grimes? A native of Maysville, she practiced law in Lexington until deciding to run for secretary of state in 2011. She defeated the sitting secretary of state, Elaine Walker, in the Democratic primary and went on to trounce Republican Bill Johnson by more than 20 points in the general election. Grimes, Fineman writes, is “polite, earnest, and cautious” and has deep Democratic roots; her father, Jerry Lundergan, is a former state party chairman and was a big supporter of both Clintons.
But as much as Grimes is seen as a rising star in Kentucky politics, she’s also known to Democrats and Republicans alike for her self-aggrandizement. Liberal alternative newspaper Leo Weekly mocked Grimes for comparing herself to Kentucky political legend Alben Barkley. “Grimes — who said she would follow in the footsteps of former Gov. Martha Lane Collins after her primary victory — is talented and has the potential to do great things. But that kind of ego-trip should probably wait until you’ve held public office for at least a few days,”Leo Weekly wrote after her election in 2011.
The McConnell campaign, meanwhile, included Grimes in a video highlighting (and poking fun at) the potential Democratic candidates for Senate in 2014. Grimes is shown to be frequently referring to herself in the third person as “Alison Lundergan Grimes.” Watch that video below:
One of Grimes's Democratic allies, house speaker Greg Stumbo, says he believes Grimes is waiting instead to run for another race at the state level--perhaps governor of Kentucky in 2015, as Grimes herself as alluded to before.
Longtime congressman Ed Markey is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in this year's special election in Massachusetts, but a new report from the Boston Globe shows Markey hardly lives in his Massachusetts home. The Globe investigated Markey's house in Malden as well as what appears to be his primary residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, outside of Washington:
Republican congressman Don Young of Alaska has crossed the aisle to endorse Democrat Mazie Hirono in the U.S. Senate race in Hawaii. "But here's what's important, Hawaii," Young says, sitting next to Hirono. "If you're looking for a United States senator who doesn't just talk about bipartisanship but actually knows how to work with both Republicans and Democrats to get things done, Mazie Hirono will be that senator." Watch the ad below:
The Arkansas Democratic party is denying presidential candidate John Wolfe the delegates he earned in the state's primary because Wolfe's selected delegates fail to meet the party's standards for diversity.
The possibility that New York City Councilman Charles Barron could clinch the Democratic nomination today in a race against Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries has put Jewish leaders of all stripes on high alert—and could set the tone for how Jewish voters view the Democratic Party going forward...
The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) has a new ad running on New York television documenting a series of radical, racist, and anti-Israel statements from Democratic congressional candidate Charles Barron of New York's Eighth District. Watch the ad below:
Democratic candidate for Congress Charles Barron of New York's Eighth District has picked up the endorsement of white supremacist David Duke. The Daily Caller reports:
Controversial New York City councilman Charles Barron may be getting closer to winning the Democratic nomination to Congress in New York's Eighth District next Tuesday. The New York Times reports:
New York City councilman Charles Barron may be on his way to winning the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York's Eighth District, despite a history of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel rhetoric. Barron, who has earned the support of retiring congressman Edolphus Towns, would be representing a district with a sizable Jewish population.
Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has won her party's nomination to face Republican Scott Brown in the general election, MassLive.com reports:
In a revealing column by Boston Globe writer Brian McGrory, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren continues to insist that she is descended from Native Americans. Warren called McGrory and spoke with him about the controversy, "sometimes expansively and without the slightest hint of apology about her conviction that she has maternal roots from the Cherokee and Delaware tribes."
Barack Obama has defeated John Wolfe Jr. in the Democratic primary in Arkansas. With 81 percent of precincts reporting, Obama, the president of the United States, has 59.5 percent of the vote while Wolfe, a lawyer from Tennessee, has 40.5 percent.
If Barack Obama experiences an upset in Arkansas’s Democratic primary today, it won’t be for lack of trying. The Obama campaign and the Democratic party have spent significant resources in Arkansas, while an unknown primary challenger has threatened the president's ability to win the support of the state's Democrats.
“We’ve had some small contributions, but the largest was, I think, maybe a hundred dollars,” says presidential candidate John Wolfe Jr., speaking to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “I’m basically paying for this myself, dipping into my retirement account.”
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