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Republican U.S Senator Rand Paul will face Democrat Charles Booker in Kentucky this fall
State Senator Morgan McGarvey wins Democratic primary for open Louisville U.S. House seat
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
LOUISVILLE (CFP) – The fall contest for U.S. Senate in Kentucky will be a showdown between Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul and Democratic challenger Charles Booker, who both easily won their primaries Tuesday.
Paul and Booker in fall faceoff for U.S. Senate race
In the 3rd U.S. House District in metro Louisville, where Democratic U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth is retiring, State Senator Morgan McGarvey defeated State Rep. Attica Scott for the Democratic nomination in the state’s only Democratic-leaning district.
He will face either Republican Rhonda Palazzo, a Louisville real estate agent and MAGA activist, or Stuart Ray, a Louisville steel company executive, who were neck-and-neck in the GOP primary.
None of Kentucky’s other five House Republicans faced a significant primary challenge Tuesday and will be favored to keep their seats in the fall.
In the Senate race, Paul, from Bowling Green, easily defeated five little-known Republican challengers in his bid for a third term, while Booker dominated a four-candidate Democratic field.
Booker, a former state representative from Louisville, broke onto the political scene in 2020 when he when he nearly upset Amy McGrath, the anointed candidate of the Democratic establishment, in the state’s U.S. Senate primary. She was later crushed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Booker launched his uphill run against Paul in July 2021 and opted to stay in the race rather than switching to the metro Louisville U.S. House seat when Yarmuth retired.
Given Kentucky’s Republican lean, Paul is a heavy favorite in the fall. But Booker has been highlighting some of Paul’s idiosyncratic stands in Congress – most recently, his decision to single-handedly block aid to Ukraine — to argue that he’s out of touch.
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Open Louisville U.S. House race, U.S. Senate contest up Tuesday in Kentucky primary
Charles Booker seeking Democratic nomination to try to take out Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
LOUISVILLE (CFP) — Democratic voters in Louisville will pick their likely next Congress member in Tuesday’s primary, while Kentucky voters statewide are expected to set up a fall showdown between Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul and Democratic challenger Charles Booker.
Rand Paul and Charles Booker expected to face off in fall U.S. Senate race
Legislative and local offices are also on the ballot Tuesday; contests for statewide offices aren’t held until 2023.
Polls for in-person voting open at 6 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. in both the Central and Eastern time zones.
In the 3rd U.S. House District in metro Louisville, where Democratic U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth is retiring, State Senator Morgan McGarvey and State Rep. Attica Scott are competing for the Democratic nomination in the state’s only Democratic-leaning district.
Seven Republicans are also competing in the 3rd District, including businessman Stuart Ray and Mike Craven, a former union official who ran unsuccessfully for the seat in 2018 and 2020.
None of Kentucky’s other five House seats – all held by Republicans – are expected to be competitive.
In the Senate race, Paul, from Bowling Green, is facing five little-known Republican challengers in his bid for a third term, while Booker is the biggest name in a four-candidate Democratic race.
Booker, a former state representative from Louisville, broke onto the political scene in 2020 when he nearly upset Amy McGrath, the anointed candidate of the Democratic establishment, in the state’s U.S. Senate primary. She was later crushed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Booker launched his uphill run against Paul in July 2021 and opted to stay in the race rather than switching to the metro Louisville U.S. House seat when Yarmuth retired.
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Black U.S. Senate candidates in the South piling up impressive amounts of campaign cash
U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Tim Scott have raised more money than any other Senate candidates nationwide
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
(CFP) — African American candidates have historically faced a structural barrier in gaining election to high office — difficulty raising the money needed to run a competitive race. But in 2022, black candidates appear to be kicking down that barrier in Southern U.S. Senate races.
U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Tim Scott lead national fundraising totals
Six Southern African American candidates have each raised more than $1 million; three have raised more than $10 million. And more than a year before election day, Democratic U.S Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia has raised more money than any other Senate candidate in the country, $44 million.
Behind Warnock is Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, at $31 million.
In the 150 years since Reconstruction, just two African Americans have been elected to represent a Southern state in the U.S. Senate — Scott and Warnock, who are both up for re-election in 2022 and amassing mountains of cash.
But the four other Southern African American candidates trying to join Scott and Warnock in the Senate are also pulling in impressive amounts of campaign money, the possession of which doesn’t ensure victory but the absence of which would certainly spell defeat.
In Georgia, Warnock is likely to face another black candidate, Republican Herschel Walker, the NFL and Georgia Bulldog great whom Donald Trump inveighed to get into the race.
In the third quarter of 2021, Warnock and Walker combined raised $13.3 million for what is likely to be among the most competitive races of the 2022 cycle; Warnock pulled in $9.5 million to $3.8 million for Walker.
Trump’s endorsement has not cleared the Republican primary field for Walker, who faces a multi-candidate primary before he can get to Warnock,. However, in his first five weeks in the race, Walker has already raised more money than any of his primary rivals.
Unlike Warnock, Scott is not facing a competitive race in the Palmetto State in 2022. But his haul during the third quarter — $8.4 million — is stoking speculation that Scott may be filling his cash cupboard for a possible 2024 run for the Republican presidential nomination.
In Florida, Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings — who raised her a national political profile as an House manager in the first Trump impeachment trial — raised $8.5 million in the third quarter, eclipsing the $6 million raised by her likely Republican opponent, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. But he’s raised $19 million overall so far, compared to her $13.5 million.
Neither Demings nor Rubio appear likely at this point to face a serious primary challenge that would deplete their coffers before turning their fire on each other.
In North Carolina, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley raised $1.5 million in the third quarter. While that total was not as impressive as some of the black candidates in other races, it was more than any other candidate in her race in either party, although she remains slightly behind her strongest white rival for the Democratic nomination, State Senator Jeff Jackson, in overall fundraising.
In heavily Republican Kentucky, former State Rep. Charles Booker from Louisville is considered the longest of long shots to unseat U.S. Senator Rand Paul, running as a self-styled “progressive.” But he, too, has taken in $1.7 million, tapping into national Democratic anger at some of Paul’s statements during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At this point in the cycle, five of the six Southern African American candidates — Warnock, Scott, Demings, Walker, and Booker — are likely to be their party’s nominee, while Beasley’s fundraising will make her competitive in North Carolina’s Democratic primary. That number of major party Southern African-American nominees will shatter historical precedent.
The races in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina are also likely to be among the most hard-fought, and expensive, in the country, with African American candidates in the mix for victory, while Scott could use 2022 as a springboard to bigger and better things.
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Second time’s a charm? Charles Booker makes new run for Kentucky U.S. Senate seat
Former Democratic legislator from Louisville will face uphill climb to unseat Republican U.S. Senator Rand in 2022
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
LOUISVILLE (CFP) — When he launched his first run for the U.S. Senate in 2020, few observers gave Charles Booker a snowball’s chance in a Kentucky August.
Democrat Charles Booker announces U.S. Senate run
He was just 32, had served in the legislature for just one year, and was trying to wrestle the Democratic nomination away from Amy McGrath, a fundraising powerhouse who had the full backing of Senate Democrats and their leader, Chuck Schumer.
But then, Booker took a leading role in social justice protests in Louisville after the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, his charismatic style caught the imagination of the Democratic left, and — amid an uneven, uninspiring and hyper-cautious campaign from McGrath — he came within 16,000 votes of pulling off what would have one of the year’s biggest primary upsets.
Exiting the race, Booker told his supporters, “Don’t ever let someone tell you what’s impossible.”
A year later, he’s trying the impossible again, this time with a run for the state’s other U.S. Senate seat, held by Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul.
“A lot of people don’t believe that change is possible in Kentucky. We’re going to prove the doubters wrong,” Booker told supporters at his kickoff rally in Louisville July 1. “We’re going to win this race, and we’re going to transform Kentucky, and it starts right now. Let’s go.”
Video of Booker’s announcement speech at end of story.
And Booker made it clear that whether or not his optimism is borne out, or whether or not the race against Paul ends up being competitive in the end, his quest to unseat Paul will be fiery, unapologetically liberal and in-your-face, in a way McGrath never was.
“Randal Howard Paul — I see you. I see you, but you don’t see us,” Booker said. “Rand Paul thinks we are a joke. He mocks us whenever he opens his mouth. He’s mocking us. He’s an embarrassment to Kentucky because he does not care.”
“He thinks his job is to stir dysfunction, to weaponize hate and essentially dismiss Kentuckians altogether.”
Rand’s response to Booker’s announcement telegraphed the likely Republican strategy against him; namely, pounding him on his more left-wing positions in a conservative state: “I just don’t think defunding the police and forcing taxpayers to pay for reparations will be very popular in Kentucky.”
What happened to McGrath in 2020 illustrates the decidedly uphill nature of Booker’s quest in 2022. She spent $90 million to lose to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell by 20 points, failing to even break 40%.
Of course, McConnell is a more formidable political force than Paul, and McGrath’s near loss to Booker in the Democratic primary — in which he beat her in Louisville-Jefferson County by 36,000 votes — was a glaring sign of her weakness as a candidate. Booker does have stronger political skills, and it seems likely at this point that he won’t have to battle through a primary.
Still, Donald Trump carried Kentucky by 26 points in 2020, and Paul heads into the race with Trump’s endorsement. And a Democrat has not won a Senate race in the commonwealth for 30 years.
Booker’s theory of the race is that he can reach, rally and motivate voters on the left, rather than trimming his sails to appear more moderate, which did not work for McGrath. To that end, he has hired two campaign operatives involved in Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock’s runoff win in January, which won with a rallying-the-base strategy.
Booker, like Warnock, is a charismatic African-American candidate with an engaging, pulpit speaking style. However, Kentucky has a much smaller black population than Georgia and is much less urban. Louisville’s impact on the statewide vote will not be as determinative as Atlanta’s was.
Indeed, Booker’s loss to McGrath shows the challenges of a base-centric style in the Bluegrass. He beat her in Louisville and Lexington, but she won the primary by carrying most of the rest of the state.
So, the key question for 2022 is, can he find enough votes in more heavily populated parts of the state to overcome Paul’s margins in more rural areas? Or can he cut into those margins with an economic appeal to rural voters in poorer counties in Eastern Kentucky, where Democrats still have local influence?
Another wild card in this race is the amount of institutional support Booker might get from national Democrats, for a race that is seen as rather less than winnable. The powers-that-be who went all in for McGrath may be wary of going down that road again, although, as Paul’s foil, Booker should be able to raise enough money on his own to be competitive.
It is not impossible for a Democrat to win statewide in Kentucky, as Governor Andy Beshear proved in 2019. Then again, Beshear was running against Matt Bevin, whose performance as governor had made him as popular as a bad rash. Paul starts the race in much better shape.
Booker starts the race with an audacious belief in his own chances, and he has clearly decided that caution is not the better part of valor. While that may or may not end up making a senator, it will make the Kentucky Senate race among them most compelling of the 2022 cycle.
Video of Charles Booker’s announcement
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Kentucky Primary: Amy McGrath survives scare, wins Democratic U.S. Senate nod
Results finally in after week of counting avalanche of absentee ballots
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
LOUISVILLE (CFP) — Amy McGrath has survived a scare in Kentucky’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, narrowly defeating State Rep. Charles Booker after absentee ballots were counted.
Final results showed McGrath with 45% to 43% for Booker, whose scrappy campaign surged from behind in the closing weeks of the race to nearly inflict an embarrassing defeat on the chosen candidate of the Democratic establishment in Washington.
U.S. Senate nominee Amy McGrath, D-Kentucky
McGrath, 45, a former Marine fighter pilot who narrowly lost a race for the U.S. House in 2018, will now take on Kentucky’s most formidable political figure, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is seeking a seventh term in November.
Reporting of final results was delayed for a week while elections officials counted hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots cast in a primary that had been postponed for nearly two months because of the coronavirus crisis.
Kentucky does not have primary runoffs, so McGrath won with a plurality.
Booker held a narrow lead in the in-person vote and beat McGrath by more than 20 points in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville. But she did better in the absentee vote and carried most of the rest of the state.
McGrath has raised more than $40 million and has the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. She spent $20 million in the Senate primary, almost all of it on ads that focused on McConnell, rather than her primary opponents.
But Booker, 35, in only his first term in the legislature, came from behind by criticizing McGrath as a “pro-Trump Democrat” unable to motivate the party’s grassroots.
He got the backing of luminaries on the Democratic left such as U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as snagging endorsements from state’s two largest newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader.
One factor in the race was the effect of protests over police violence that have roiled Louisville, home to the state’s largest pool of Democratic voters, in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman who was mistakenly shot in her home by police executing a no-knock warrant.
In the race’s closing days, Booker went up with ads criticizing McGrath for not participating in the protests, which included a awkward clip from a recent debate in which McGrath said she wasn’t involved because she “had some family things going on.” By contrast, Booker was shown addressing the protest crowd will a bullhorn.
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