Early reports out of Kentucky indicated that Bluegrass-State
Democrats did not want actress Ashley Judd to run for the U.S. Senate from her
home state against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The fear supposedly
is that since Kentuckians generally are conservative and Judd is liberal, her
presence on the ticket would spell doom not only for the Democrats' attempt to
wrest away McConnell's seat but for downballot Democrats as well.
Nothing could
be further from the truth.
There's no regular Kentucky
Democrat who has any hope of beating McConnell in the 2014 general election. Consequently,
Kentucky Democrats have almost no chance of raising significant out-of-state
money or media coverage for this race. It's going to take an out-of-the-box
candidate to energize Democratic donors to pour money into Kentucky, and to get
the media to take an interest.
A candidate
such as Judd is perfect.
In my book Winning Political Campaigns: A Comprehensive
Guide to Electoral Success, I compare six different candidate types to six
different types of baseball managers. One is 'the Immortal'--in baseball a
superstar who becomes a manager as an accolade for playing accomplishments that
have nothing to do with management ability. I go on to explain that in the
political arena, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan were
Immortals--honored with elective office because of their successes in completely
different venues.
The public
loves these types of candidates--athletes, actors, musicians, etc.--and the GOP
knows this well. It's the GOP that tends to nominate people who made their achievements
in other fields--for example, football player J.C. Watts and baseball player Jim
Bunning, whom the Republicans turned into a U.S. Senator from Kentucky.
Judd is
likable, well-known, intelligent, and was reared in Kentucky and attended the
state university, so Kentucky voters aren't going to reject her out of hand and
are going to give her a fair hearing. She will be able to raise money from
Hollywood donors and from women's and progressive groups all over the country that
would simply concede the race to McConnell were any candidate other than Judd
his opponent.
Suddenly, a
race that the GOP had a lock on becomes competitive with the money and media
attention that Judd will bring. And that money and media attention will help
downballot Democrats, not hurt them.
But is Judd
too liberal for Kentuckians?
Here's an
example why this might not be a
problem. Illinois is thought of as a Blue state, but not too long ago it was
not only competitive, but leaned GOP. Illinois went for Republican President
Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1984.
Yet, that
same year, the Illinois electorate voted out longtime Republican U.S. Senator
Charles Percy in favor of one of late 20th-Century America's biggest liberals,
Paul Simon. Hundreds of thousands of voters voted for Reagan, and went down to
the very next ballot line and voted for Simon. Why? Because they liked Simon
and felt he was real.
In Winning Political Campaigns, I quote one
political insider as saying that people who were very conservative would
consistently come up to Simon and say "I don't agree with you on a single stand
you have, yet I'll vote for your because I see you're sincere.'"
Senate
Majority Leader McConnell has many political gifts, but when you think of them,
likability and sincerity are not the first ones that come to mind. It will be
up to Kentuckians to decide if they want a tough political insider or a sincere
outsider. In 1984 in neighboring Illinois, even conservatives decided they
wanted the likable outsider, so a Judd victory in Kentucky in 2014 certainly is
possible.
And what if
Judd loses? Will she just be considered a Hollywood dilettante who got in the
race on a lark?
No. Judd will
impress people, and if she loses, she won't be done. She may be playing a
longer game than anyone realizes. McConnell will be tough to beat under any
circumstances; freshman Senator and Tea Party lightning-rod Rand Paul, who is
up again in 2016, may be Judd's real target.
Judd may be
using the same strategy a young Bill Clinton did in Arkansas--get well-known
among state political leaders in an early losing campaign, as Clinton did in
his 1974 run for Congress, and use those contacts to grab a bigger prize down
the road. Clinton's '74 Congressional loss was crucial to his getting the
backing, funding, and footsoldiers for his later successful Arkansas
Gubernatorial runs.
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