Paul handily defeated Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who had the strong support of Kentucky’s own Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 58.8 percent to 35.4 percent. On the Democratic side, Attorney General Jack Conway bested Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo in a squeaker, 44.1 percent to 43.0 percent. (Numbers are based on results at 5:10 a.m. Pacific, on May 19, 2010, with 99.5 percent of precincts counted.)
Just about anything tea baggers do makes headlines, so it is not surprising that the Beltway punditocracy and “liberal” media have all but anointed Rand Paul as the frontrunner in the general election. Maybe so, but voter turnout tallies suggest weak support for libertarian Paul among his party’s traditional Republican base.
With a statewide turnout of about 30 percent, which officials described as low, 347,936 votes were cast for the five Republicans in the primary — which was 32.5 percent fewer than the 514,173 votes cast for the five Democrats. There was also a 27 percent difference between combined votes of the two top contenders in both parties. Dems Conway and Mongiardo received a total of 448,042 votes, while Paul and Grayson received just 330,397. And Conway received about 20,000 more votes than did Paul.
Why the soft support for Rand Paul? It may be that his libertarian views are just too radical for GOP traditionalists, as Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Committee, suggested in a statement after the election:
“Rand Paul would abolish the Department of Education, would disband the Federal Reserve, and would end farm subsidies for Kentucky’s farmers … Rand Paul may love the national media spotlight but he has shown no interest in growing Kentucky’s economy or creating new jobs.”
According to his bio on Wikipedia, Paul also opposes the war in Iraq for libertarian isolationist reasons, which is a position diametrically opposed to Republican red-meat dogma.
Democrats hold a slight edge in voter registration in Kentucky — 1.6 million Dems versus 1.04 million Republicans. There are only 189,113 registered independents.
Despite Democratic strength in the state — the governor and lieutenant governor are both Democrats and Democrats control the lower house in the legislature — Kentucky has trended Republican in the past few national cycles. The last time the state went blue was in the Clinton-Dole race in 1996. Both its Republican senators replaced Democrats — Mitch McConnell won his seat from a Democrat in 1985, and Jim Bunning replaced Democratic Sen. Wendell Ford in 1999.
Another caveat: It’s possible that a significant driver in the low turnout on the GOP side was dissatisfaction with both candidates. Rand Paul’s opponent Trey Grayson received negative attention late in the campaign When he complained that Paul’s surge in the polls was driven by an unfair assist from Fox News:
TREY GRAYSON: “I’ve been on Fox News once, on a live feed on one of the shows, and I was told I was to expect a certain line of questioning, and I was given a different line of questioning. … [Rand Paul]’s on all of the time. His dad had these phenomenal contacts, so — he’s on Fox News every couple of weeks with softballs.”
Of course, Fox denied the charge it had promoted Rand Paul’s candidacy — which would violate election laws if it could be proven. This leaves observers with a choice: Who are you going to believe, Fox News or a typical whining Republican who claims to have been victimized by the media?
That’s a tough call.
