A day after the US Congress ingloriously left Washington for a summer break with few accomplishments under its belt, members shifted to their real focus this year: the US mid-term elections, specifically for control of the US Senate.
The center of the political universe on Saturday was a town in far western Kentucky, Fancy Farm, where a pivotal and closely followed Senate race was fought in a metal farm shed, on a brick stage with a white picket fence meant to suggest a rural front porch.
However, instead of genial and civil banter, there was an exchange of low blows and political zingers as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of the Republican Party and Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat who is giving him one of the toughest races of his long senatorial career, sparred with each other at a church picnic.
The decades-long tradition of political speeches at the Fancy Farm picnic signals the beginning of Kentucky’s campaign season. This year, it also provided a starting gun for the sprint toward the national elections. Organizers said the crowd, which was spilling out of the shed 15-deep, was the biggest ever.
McConnell seized on the nationalization of his battle against Grimes, each side of which is attracting money from around the country, to slam the Democrat as a favorite of Hollywood and eastern US elites, who “make fun of us at cocktail parties.”
He also attacked the national news media assembled there.
“[US President Barack] Obama and his liberal buddies coming to Kentucky is like foreign travel,” he said to a big cheer from his supporters, who occupied one half of the shed, opposite Grimes’ supporters, like two sides of a wedding.
Grimes, who raised more money in the most recent quarter than any senatorial candidate in the country, embraced the out-of-state attention, accusing McConnell of losing touch with Kentucky after 30 years in Washington.
“Senator, the women of Kentucky and nationally are here today to send you a message,” she said.
She repeatedly emphasized her youth and gender, while portraying McConnell as, well, old and stuck in the past.
Grims joked that her rival’s approval ratings were lower than her age, 35, while saying that his views of equal pay for women are from a bygone era.
“If Mitch McConnell were a TV show, he’d be Mad Men,” the Democratic candidate said.
McConnell, 72, zeroed in on Grimes’ inexperience, comparing her brief political resume as Kentucky secretary of state to Obama’s.
“He didn’t have any qualifications at all,” the Republican contender said. “Sound familiar?”
“Every time he got in trouble, and his inexperience became obvious, he called in [former US president] Bill Clinton. Sound familiar?” McConnell added.
Clinton plans to campaign for Grimes in the coming days.
McConnell had the sharper zingers, arguably because he had better material, using recent stumbles by Grimes, including misidentifying Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield as a defense against Gaza tunnel-diggers.
“This week she came up with her own plan to keep folks from streaming into our country: missile defense,” McConnell said.
However, Grimes gave arguably the stronger speech, one of the best of her campaign so far. She was steely voiced and composed, rousing supporters with a rising refrain of “Mitch McConnell doesn’t care.”
At one point McConnell, a seasoned master of political attack, looked on at her, agape.
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