The Kentucky Senate Democratic primary race to determine who takes on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) in November is too close to call, according to projections made by “NBC News.”
Given the timing I think mail in votes will break for McGrath
we shall see…
she probably would have voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh
That should be enough to disqualify McGrath right there. But her support for McConnell should be a resounding death knell.
OT
Booker’s push came too late for him to win the mail in vote most likely, so he was depending on the in person voting. It looks like he didn’t win that either, though how much the screwy voting conditions hurt him is a question.
Booker is probably the better candidate for the Democrats in most places, but it’s Kentucky so it’s really not clear that an enthusiastic Democrat pushing things like the Green New Deal would have any chance against McConnell. McGrath has a pretty strong personal record and a far better personality than McConnell (neither is a high bar though), but her instincts are a bit wobbly…the Kavanaugh thing was probably her trying to straddle the fence. If she’d firm up on the side of the Democrats instead of pulling a few pandering things to try to pull in some conservatives she’ll do much better, otherwise she’ll lose.
McGrath hasn’t been the favorite of professional Democrats but she seems better suited to the Kentucky electorate than Booker. Kentucky is redneck heaven after all.
Most people who voted in person in Jefferson County said it was the easiest, quickest voting process they have ever witnessed. The blue checks on Twitter got the KY voting story about as wrong as possible,.
I will be curious to see if this disproportionate lead holds when all the ballots for Fayette County are certified. And had endorsements like Warren’s come in sooner, how would that have changed this number?
“Charles Booker led Amy McGrath by 49 percentage points among Fayette County voters who cast their ballot in person Tuesday, but most of the votes in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate were submitted by mail and have not yet been counted.”
Booker won 72 percent of the vote, with 1,566 votes.
McGrath won 23 percent of the vote, with 499 votes.
Fayette County reported the results of in-person voting Tuesday night but most results won’t be released until next week."
https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article243753282.html
I’m pulling for Booker. His campaign is w/o a doubt a long shot, but I say he has more potential to win than McGrath who would be guaranteed to lose against Mitch. KY isn’t going to buy the fake moderate act and McGrath is running a campaign that only outsiders think looks good.
The two largest population centers- Louisville and Lexington- haven’t reported their final numbers yet, and won’t until the 30th.
At last count Booker and McGrath were only separated by 8000 votes.
For all “The sky is falling” hand-wringing about in-person voting, for the most part that stuff has been going pretty smoothly and with little associated risk as long as you wear a damned mask.
While we’ll certainly have disasters in November (Georgia, Florida, looking at you very sternly), I get the feeling this is going to be such a landslide that we will know the results on Election night, and it won’t matter that a handful of States will report their stuff later because they wouldn’t swing the electoral college.
GOTPers don’t have nearly the reason to depress voting during a primary than they do during a general, though.
The typical repression tactics (closing ballot stations, malfunctioning machines, not enough ballots on hand initially) have been tested out in locations, and have been failing because people are insisting on showing up and voting anyways.
In a typical election, I’d agree with you, this tactic works (e.g. if you hate both trump and clinton and don’t think that it matters who ends up winning, you’re less likely to invest the extra time needed to overcome repression tactics).
But all indicators are showing a highly-motivated electorate that’s ready to battle whatever they need to to get heard in November.
People outside the state had no sense of what was actually going on. But as they sober up this morning…
The answer to the headline question here is…does it matter?
Ask @valgalky23, she’s the resident expert there.
I prefer @pluckyinky, she’s got tenure.
Why are NBC News, MSNBC, and Politico in quotes? That’s just weird.
Exactly. It was just embarassing how smoothly things actually went here. In November, they’re going to need to add three or four similar voting stations like the fairgrounds but other than that I don’t see the need for any other significant changes. Mail in voting worked extremely well.
Thanks! Honestly, I don’t see how a black socialist Dem can get elected statewide in KY, particularly in this cycle. I think it will be fairly easy for McConnell to savage him on a host of issues and basically turn him into Obama 2.0. Booker, in my opinion, is a gift to Mitch. That said, I actually think Booker is a charismatic, smart, very likable candidate who would be MUCH better matched against Rand Paul in 2022. That’s a fight I think he can win.
I really don’t like McGrath all that much and she stumbled hard out of the gate when she tried to be a Trump Democrat. It was just a really bad strategy that she dropped pretty quickly. Since then, she’s cut some really sharp, smart ads. Although, she’s going to have to start talking about something other than being a fighter pilot. I think she’s got the better shot against McConnell and she’ll certainly have all the money she needs to beat him.
My friend who lives there prefers Booker but, thinks McGrath has a better shot at beating The Turtle.
As carlmanaster said above, the quotation marks need to be removed from the news organizations mentioned.
It’s a great story, but the bizarre use of quotation marks takes away some credibility.
If TPM needs copyeditors, please ask the readership.
TPM is awesome, but sloppy editing is a chronic problem on the site, even in Josh’s posts.
