Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes started running a new television ad on Tuesday in which an unemployed coal miner questions whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing all he can to put people back to work.
The 30-second ad features David Stanley, who lost his coal mining job and is sitting on a foldout chair next to Mrs. Grimes in front of a gas station.
“Mr. McConnell, in the last two years, we’ve lost almost half of our coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky. Why’d you say it’s not your job to bring jobs to Kentucky?” Mr. Stanley asks, alluding to comments the veteran Republican made to a local news outlet earlier this year in which he said economic development is “not my job.”
After a short pause, Mrs. Grimes leans over and tells Mr. Stanley, “I couldn’t believe he said that either.”
Mrs. Grimes then turns to the camera and says, “I approve this message because, Senator [McConnell], that will be my No. 1 job.”
The McConnell camp countered that the ad is the latest example of how Mrs. Grimes is basing “her entire campaign on mischaracterizations and outright falsehoods.”
“We’re one year into Alison Lundergan Grimes’ candidacy and the only factual argument for her campaign is that she’s Barack Obama’s Kentucky candidate,” said Allison Moore, a McConnell campaign spokesperson.
They campaign said that Mr. McConnell has protected jobs in the coal industry from the job-killing regulations pursued by President Obama.
This is the second ad in which Mrs. Grimes has had a coal miner pose a question of Mr. McConnell. The first featured Don Disney, a retired miner, who asked Mr. McConnell why he “voted to raise my Medicare costs to $6,000?”
The McConnell campaign said that ad also twisted the truth and said Mrs. Grimes was resorting to a scare tactic because her campaign was hitting the panic button.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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