Matt Gunterman February 16th, 2008

Like most of you, the last-minute decision (literally) of Bruce Lunsford (D) to get into the U.S. Senate race left me scratching my head.

Now, that decision does make sense if you buy the following line, which is the common narrative going around these days:

Sen. Chuck “Lizzy” Schumer (D) doesn’t care about defeating Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) in Kentucky so much as keeping him bogged down here and spending his loads of cash, and in Lunsford, Schumer found a man who was willing to part with millions of his own dollars on yet another ego trip. In short, Schumer manipulated Lunsford, and the KDP and Gov. Steve Beshear (D) played along because one more disastrous electoral showing from Lunsford in Kentucky should finish him off politically, and Kentucky democrats would therefore never have to worry about him again.

The most difficult part of that storyline for me to believe is that Lunsford would get into the race without some shift in the dynamics from his standpoint.

Why would a man who’s spent as many millions as Lunsford has and who’s never gotten out of a Democratic primary before want to spend millions more on a race where he might not make it out of the primary again?

Surely Schumer’s people had to make one hell of a guarantee to get Lunsford into the race.

I’ve thought and thought and thought what might have prompted Lunsford’s change of heart other than pure gullibility, and I can only think that perhaps Schumer finally has “the goods” on McConnell.

You know — “the goods” about McConnell’s life in the summer of 1967.

Yeah, that would be “the goods” that finally substantiate what has so far only been a decades-long whisper campaign against McConnell.

So, did Schumer’s political henchmen sit Lunsford down and say, “Listen, we have ‘the goods’ on McConnell, and we’re holding it all until close to the election, but even with ‘the goods’ we need a candidate who has the financial firepower to finish McConnell off.”

That scenario — while probably far too optimistic — at least makes more sense to me; it’s the ONLY scenario that ever allows me to forgive Chuck Schumer.

Because, even in the end if Andrew Horne (D) had lost to McConnell, the act of having Horne run and the movement that would have coalesced around his candidacy would have been good for Kentucky, good for the Kentucky Democratic party, and good for growing the progressive wing of that party.

If Schumer doesn’t spring “the goods” on McConnell — if Schumer doesn’t deliver on this one — then his political maneuvering will have cost a generation of Kentuckians dearly.

We’ll see.

• 2008 KY U.S. Senate Race , Chuck Schumer , Mitch McConnell
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