LOUSIVILLE, KY (WAVE) - After weeks of "will she or won't she"
chatter about Ashley Judd's possible run for one of Kentucky's U.S. senate seats
in 2014, the man who holds that seat now is generating some talk of his own.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's campaign just released its first campaign ad.
In it, McConnell's wife, former U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, strikes
back against an anti-McConnell group that posted an ethnically charged tweet
last month and says her husband loves Kentucky.
Political analyst and CEO of Bisig Impact group, Larry Bisig, said the ad is
intended to counteract the attention that Judd has been getting.
"Her earned media has been off the charts," Bisig said, "and that's
just as good as paid media, and you have to shore up and adjust against that
type of thing."
Bisig said using McConnell's wife helps the senator defend his record on
women's issues.
"What better person to articulate who he is and how he is with women
than his own wife," Bisig said.
Kentucky Democrats released a statement on Wednesday that read in part,
"Running campaign commercials almost two years before an election is an
unprecedented admission of fear for a sitting senator. I understand why he's
scared: polls were already showing him to be the least popular senator in the
country before he tried to end the Violence Against Women Act. But the truth
is, no commercial can undo his actions against America's women."
Bisig said it boils down to money: Judd will be able to raise it so
McConnell has to start campaigning now.
"He never runs scared," Bisig said. "He runs smart and he's
not going to give hearsay or an opportunity for misinformation to be spread out
before being able to state his own case, and whether he were a Democrat or a
Republican, that's exactly what I would recommend doing."
Copyright 2013 WAVE News. All rights reserved.
Sen. Mitch McConnell
Ashley Judd
Larry Bisig
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and WAVE, a Raycom Media Station. 