This Is The Race That Will Tell Democrats If They
President Donald Trump on Saturday is expected to parachute into the middle of a surprisingly close congressional Canada Goose Jackets race in Kentucky. He wants to rally conservatives around a GOP incumbent under siege from one of the leading faces of Democratic efforts to regain control of the House of Representatives.
Democrats don’t necessarily need retired Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, a former Marine Canada Goose Parka fighter pilot who rose to prominence thanks to a viral campaign ad, to win Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District. It’s possible they could pick up the 23 seats required to flip the House without her.
cheap Canada Goose But on election night, McGrath’s race against Rep. Andy Barr (R) may offer the earliest indication of whether they will, and of how big that majority could be if they do. EST, meaning McGrath vs. Barr will be one of the first races to end and one of the earliest swing districts to canada goose record an outright winner. A victory for McGrath could portend a big night for Democrats. Even a narrow loss in a district like this one may suggest they have enough momentum to regain the majority. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose black friday sale “It’s a real bellwether race, because canada goose deals it’s one of the targets and because buy canada goose jacket cheap it’s going to be one of the first races called,” said Scott Jennings, a Kentucky based Republican political consultant. Canada Goose Outlet canada goose black friday sale
“We’re gonna find out which way the wind is blowing,” he said. “If she wins, that means [Democrats] are knocking down contested jump shots.”
That it is even contested is surprising. The 6th District has been a reliable Republican seat since Barr defeated former Rep. Ben Chandler (D) in 2012, and forecasters considered it safe when the 2018 cycle began. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t include the district in an initial list of targets, and it recruited a candidate with the ability to self fund his campaign canada goose coats on sale in part to save money on a race it wasn’t ready to prioritize.
canada goose But McGrath upended it all when she beat Lexington Mayor Jim Gray in the Democratic primary, erasing a 40 point deficit early in the race. This happened within a broader context of surging Democratic enthusiasm, especially among women, and sinking approval numbers for a Republican led Congress, putting more seats into play. For Democrats, the central Kentucky district which is largely rural but which includes blue strongholds in Lexington and Frankfort, the state capital was now on the map. canada goose
With less than a month to go, the race appears to be a dead heat. Internal polls from each campaign show their respective candidate ahead, while a New York Times live poll called it a statistical tie, with Barr ahead by a single point, in late September.
buy canada goose jacket Both parties are prioritizing the race. On Friday, less than 24 hours before Trump’s scheduled appearance with Barr, former Vice President Joe Biden stumped for McGrath in a rural corner of the district. Democrats have prefaced Trump’s appearance by circulating audio of Barr joking that the president “has a tendency to exaggerate from time to time.” Barr, who said the 8 second clip was taken out of context, responded cheap Canada Goose by saying that McGrath’s embrace of Biden amounts to support for the “failed policies” of the Obama administration, which Republicans have long blamed (with little evidence) for the demise of the coal industry. buy canada goose jacket
Barr and the GOP’s attacks on McGrath have come via a relentless series of television and radio ads over the last two months. Barr and GOP political groups have already spent or committed over $3 million in television and broadcast advertising in the Lexington media market, The New York Times reported this week.
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canada goose store McGrath surged onto the scene in August 2017 with an ad that touted her background in the Marines and her efforts to overcome the armed forces’ ban on women in combat. The spot, which left her campaign temporarily broke, turned her into a political star, fundraising force and Resistance hero. canada goose store
canada goose uk outlet Her primary win made McGrath one of the most prominent of the women candidates who have pulled off upsets in Democratic contests across the country. She’s also one of a crop of Democratic candidates using their status as veterans to their canada goose clearance sale advantage her viral https://www.winterdownparkas.com ad featured jarringly nonchalant b roll of an aerial bombing and the combination of traits has helped McGrath remain a fundraising canada goose clearance machine in the general election. In the fiscal quarter that ended Sept. 30, she raised $3.65 million. canada goose uk outlet
cheap canada goose uk McGrath’s feminist bona fides have made her a darling of grassroots Democrats, but Barr has attempted to wield those same credentials against her. He has released ads that attack her for a speech where she said, “Hell yeah, I’m a feminist.” He has tied her to liberal women like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D Calif.), talk show host (and early McGrath supporter) Chelsea Handler and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. His ads have blasted McGrath as a “rubber stamp” progressive canadian goose jacket in favor of abortion rights. cheap canada goose uk
Conventional wisdom says that would be enough to doom a candidate in conservative, religious central Kentucky. But it hasn’t: McGrath has countered Barr’s attack ads with the same mix of outsider politics, overt feminism and a sort of economic populism geared toward Kentucky specific issues in particular, health care and rural economic development that she used to soar past Gray in the primary.
uk canada goose As a first time candidate, she can credibly point to her own discontent with buy canada goose jacket the political system that she sees as having fueled Trump’s popularity in places like Kentucky. She laughs off Barr’s attempts to sew her to Pelosi’s hip, noting that the DCCC recruited Gray into the 6th District primary to run against her. uk canada goose
canada goose uk shop “In the primary I took on the Democratic establishment and I beat them. Now I’m taking on the Republican establishment, and I’m going to beat them too,” she told HuffPost after a late September appearance at a Democratic event in Georgetown, Kentucky, repeating a line that has become something of a de facto campaign slogan. canada goose uk shop
canadian goose jacket To McGrath, the discontent in her district is rooted in canada goose black friday sale the belief that both parties have quit working on behalf of the common voter. canada goose outlet National Democrats, she raged in the primary, are no longer fighting for Kentucky’s workers. Republicans like Barr, she asserts now, are serving a wealthy donor class, not ordinary folks. Her evidence: Barr’s reliable votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the sweeping health reform law that helped give coverage to more than 500,000 Kentuckians, and his support for the 2018 GOP tax cut package that handed 82 percent of its benefits canada goose store to the wealthiest 1 percent of households, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. canadian goose jacket
“It’s a question of, who are they working for?” McGrath said. “They’re constantly working for the wealthiest and corporations. That’s who they’re passing legislation to help. The wealthiest 1 percent.”
She burnishes this with calls for expanded investment into the rural parts of the district. Rural broadband is a favorite topic; new infrastructure spending is another. On health care, McGrath doesn’t go as far as the new wave of Democrats who call for Medicare for all. Still, she has advocated for expanding Obamacare by adding a public option and reducing the eligibility age for Medicare.
buy canada goose jacket cheap There are a lot of women in this district and the rest of Kentucky who. see her as someone who will stand up for them and show that women can do this kind of job. buy canada goose jacket cheap
Al Cross, veteran Kentucky political journalist
Canada Goose Coats On Sale And then there is her feminism, which she’s continued to foreground even as Barr has attempted to use it against her. She’s still the “hell yeah” feminist the first female Marine to fly an F/A 18 in combat, a candidate willing to say she supports abortion rights and to argue for expanded contraception access, someone who believes this district is home to a lot of women who, she said, are “fed up of the picture of a bunch of old white men sitting around” making decisions that primarily affect women. Canada Goose Coats On Sale
Al Cross, a veteran Kentucky political journalist and analyst, predicted that McGrath will “get a lot of votes from Republican women” on Election Day.
“There are a lot of women in this district and the rest of Kentucky who feel like their ambitions, political Canada Goose online and otherwise, have been suppressed,” Cross said. “And they see her as someone who will stand up for them and show that women can do this kind of job.”
canada goose clearance This approach worked in the primary. Can it work again with the more conservative general electorate? There are reasons to believe it could, not just because of the stances Barr has taken on the increasingly popular health care law and the never popular tax cut package, but also because the landscape in Kentucky has continued to shift as the race has worn on. canada goose clearance
In March, Kentucky teachers swarmed the state Capitol in Frankfort after Republicans in the state legislature passed a controversial pension reform bill and cut public education budgets. Teachers shut down schools over what they saw as broader attacks on the public education system and on working class Kentuckians from Gov. Matt Bevin (R) and his GOP allies. Dozens of teachers signed up to run for office,while others pledged to “Remember in November” and vote Republicans out. That may only further feed anti incumbency sentiments in the state: A top legislative Republican lost his primary to a teacher in May, and Bevin is now one of the least popular governors in the country.