Lundergan Grimes focuses on generation divide, gender in Senate race
July 3, 2013
By Alexandra Jaffe – The Hill – Democrats believe their path to victory over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) runs through the generational divide between him and Senate hopeful Alison Lundergan Grimes, a candidate half the Kentucky senator’s age whose campaign is already targeting younger, female voters.
Kentucky political activists say the Democratic contender must also cast McConnell as a relic of old-style Washington politics — and the personification of Senate dysfunction — if she is to have any chance of upsetting the five-term Republican.
“I think because [McConnell] is usually in a position of saying no, it’s hard for him to be a positive person because he’s never in that spot,” said Bruce Lunsford, the Democrat who ran against McConnell in 2008 and lost by 6 points.
“There may be people who like his policies but people don’t necessarily talk about him as if he’s Oprah Winfrey. It’s not as if he’s likable.”
Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of State, announced her campaign to challenge McConnell on Monday. She said her opponent had “lost touch” with voters after nearly three decades in Washington.
Advisers to Lundergan Grimes have indicated their plan is to draw a sharp contrast with McConnell, portraying her as an optimistic, likable alternative to the incumbent, who polls have shown is one of the most unpopular senators in the nation.
The most obvious difference is age. Lundergan Grimes, first elected to statewide office in 2011, is 34. McConnell is 71 and was elected to the Senate in 1984, when Lundergan Grimes was turning 6.
Lundergan Grimes played up her youth and gender at her campaign launch on Monday, stressing that she was Kentucky’s “only female constitutional officer” and “the youngest secretary of State across the nation that is a female.”
Lundergan Grimes’s supporters believe McConnell’s campaign style — the Senate minority leader is known to run personal, caustic, take-no-prisoners campaigns — could backfire if used against a young female, and drive up his negatives.
There are already signs Lundergan Grimes is gearing up for a fierce race. She has hired Mark Putnam, a veteran of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s 2012 victory in North Dakota, to run her communications operation.
Message discipline may well be key to her chances.
