Al Cross: "Jack Conway Has Made The Senate Race About Rand Paul." *SIGH*.

Jack Conway Has Made The Senate Race About Rand Paul.
By Al Cross

Last week's Senate primary elections in Kentucky, Arkansas and Pennsylvania have almost universally been described as a referendum against the political establishment. And in large measure, they were.

But the national commentary about Republican nominee Rand Paul's huge landslide, and his post-election stumbles on civil rights, has obscured an important victory for most of the Democratic establishment in Kentucky -- the nomination of Attorney General Jack Conway to oppose Paul.

Contrary to implications here a week ago, Conway's backing by most of Kentucky's Democratic bigwigs -- topped by party icon Wendell Ford -- appeared to carry him past Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo. Ford campaigned with Conway in the final days, generating favorable news coverage and amplifying the endorsement commercial with Ford, 6th District U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, state Auditor Crit Luallen and House Speaker Greg Stumbo.

Some of us thought that closing message, though backed by an ample campaign fund, was too establishmentarian at a time when Paul had whipped up anti-establishment feelings among voters of both parties. But word from Conway's camp was that the endorsements (and those of the two big newspapers) were the only message that seemed to make a difference in the campaign's polling. And it seemed to prove true at the precincts; it's hard to imagine Conway winning some of those rural counties outside his home Louisville TV market without Ford's backing.

So, the Kentucky Democratic establishment won one, barely -- by 3,476 votes, about 0.7 percent of the total. But a much larger establishment, the national Democratic Party and President Barack Obama, will be a burden and not a boost to Conway in his race with Paul.

Obama lost Kentucky's 2008 Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton by 31 percentage points and has remained a stranger to the state. Much of Kentucky lies in the Pennsylvania-to-Oklahoma "McCain Belt" of counties that voted more strongly against Obama than 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Not only is that an uphill landscape for Conway, he supports abortion rights, has said that he would welcome Obama to the state to campaign for him, and that he would have voted for Obama's health-insurance reforms. Soon he will have to defend, or find a way to distance himself from, Obama's fiscal policies that have voters worried about deficits, debt and taxes and looking to Paul.

Knowing all that, Conway quickly tried to make the race about Paul, attacking him in a tough, focused and usefully short victory speech that even his detractors said was the best they had ever seen him give. It worked, perhaps faster than he imagined. His key salient was: "If you're a Democrat, Republican or independent who cares about the Civil Rights Act, then you cannot afford Rand Paul, because he doesn't think it has a place in our society."

That set the table for the national news media, and they feasted on Paul and his repeated refusal to support the 1964 law that ended segregation in public accommodations, a refusal first recorded on video during a live, online interview with this newspaper's editorial board.

"I don't like the idea of telling private business owners" whom they can admit, Paul told the editorialists, arguing that most of the act was about other things, such as ending institutional racism. But the public-accommodations section was its crucial core, and what changed American society.

Paul dug himself a deeper hole with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC Wednesday night, incorrectly saying that most of the things the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fought were "Jim Crow" discrimination laws. Then he mischaracterized what he told the newspaper, and exhibited little appreciation of the concept of "public accommodations," suggesting that the law made restaurants "publicly owned."

Paul's interviews on the issue were filled with the very "weaving and dodging" that he said in his victory speech that he had been advised to do but would not. Under increasing pressure Thursday, he finally said he would have voted for the law. But he had already made clear that he thinks that private businesses should be able to bar people based on race. That stopped being an issue in this country 40 years ago. Paul is no racist, but puts a premium on private property, above the role of government in guaranteeing human rights to create a just society.

At his core, Paul is not a Republican, but a libertarian, and a creature of the vaguely defined tea party movement. That showed in his speech, which he began by slowly repeating the mantra of his campaign from the start: "I bring a message from the tea party." His only mention of the GOP was to criticize those Republicans who he said have strayed from the principles of limited government.

Here's another Paul quote we need to remember, from his last rally before the election: "The one thing about my campaign is that I am not afraid to be not elected." Rand Paul is a conviction politician, a rarity these days, and that's one reason he beat Secretary of State Trey Grayson by more than 23 percentage points and 82,000 votes. But incautious expressions of conviction could make him lose the general election, just as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell fears.

McConnell, who suffered a great embarrassment in the trouncing of his candidate, may be proven right in half of what he said on "Meet the Press" last weekend: "I think Trey Grayson would be a stronger candidate in November -- but I suspect Kentucky's going to be in a pretty Republican mood this fall." That reflects his strategy for the race, which Paul seems to have adopted: Run against Obama.

The problem for McConnell and his party is that their nominee is now the issue, and isn't really a Republican -- and thus will lose many votes that usually go to a GOP nominee. Shortly before the election, a survey by Public Policy Polling found that half of Grayson voters had an unfavorable view of Paul and three out of seven said they wouldn't vote for him. His post-election stumbles surely hardened many of those opinions, and made independents and moderate Democrats stop and wonder: "Who is this guy?" Perhaps the establishment candidate will look like a safer choice.

Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.