Grimes, McConnell throw barbs at Fancy Farm

FANCY FARM, Ky. – U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes met Saturday for the first time in a year, sparring on the stage at the annual Fancy Farm Picnic in western Kentucky.

With the crowd a bit better-behaved than in past years, Democrat Grimes hammered on Republican McConnell, listing a series of her contrasting policy positions and urging the crowd to respond that "Mitch McConnell doesn't care" on each one. McConnell for his part took shots at Grimes and a series of gaffes she and her campaign have made over the past year, including a recent statement that the Democrat's campaign confused Israel's missile defense system with efforts to stop terrorists from tunneling into Israel.

But more than anything, McConnell continued in his campaign's primary election strategy, which is to tie Grimes to Democratic President Barack Obama, who is unpopular in the state.

"You see, Kentucky is under attack from Barack Obama's administration and we need to fight back," McConnell told the crowd.

Grimes noted that Obama was not on the ballot. "This race is between me and you and the people of Kentucky," she said.

A record throng of between 15,000 and 20,000 attended this year's Fancy Farm Picnic, a fundraising event for St. Jerome's Catholic Church, and some 4,000 to 5,000 people attended the political speeches, organizer Mark Wilson estimated.

In the pavalion where the speeches were delivered, the crowd was divided fairly evenly between Grimes backers, in blue t-shirts, and McConnell supporters, in red t-shirts. Grimes' side carried ready-made signs as well as hand-printed ones that said "Gridlock McConnell Stopped Kentucky's Jobs. It's Time To Retire Old Gridlock." Some of the senator's side carried signs with a color photo of Obama on one side and Grimes on the other.

The crowd was loud and boisterous as always but the partisans didn't chant throughout the entire speeches, largely complying with the request of church officials, who said some people who want to hear the speeches in recent years have complained that they just couldn't hear.

"When you agree with what they say, cheer. If you disagree, boo," Supreme Court Justice Bill Cunningham urged the crowd. "And then shut up and let them go on with their speech."

The event culminated three days of events in the region that included, breakfasts, lunches, dinners and speeches from Paducah to Fancy Farm.

It also brought controversy when Kathy Groob, a northern Kentucky Democrat, sent out a tweet in response to something McConnell said at a Graves County GOP breakfast in which she called out McConnell's wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, for her ethnicity. Chao was born in Taiwan.

"Hey Mitch, nothing against your wife and spouses should be off limits; since you mentioned, she isn't from KY, she is Asian," Groob tweeted.

The Kentucky Democratic Party quickly denounced the tweet, telling WHAS's Joe Arnold that the "comments are abhorrent and have no place in Kentucky politics."

Groob deleted the tweet from her account. "My sincere apologies for poor choice of words," she tweeted.

The event was the first time since last Aug. 3 that McConnell and Grimes have met on the same stage when they last sparred at Fancy Farm.

Grimes used the occasion Saturday to challenge McConnell to meet her four more times before the election — at a forum sponsored by the Farm Bureau, at a Kentucky Educational Television debate and at debates in Beattyville and Pikeville.

McConnell, who has already said he would attend the Farm Bureau forum, didn't respond on stage and slipped away with Chao and Sen. Rand Paul shortly after he and Paul spoke.

"Kind of makes you wish Rand Paul was on the ballot this year too, so they could leave the Senate together," state Auditor Adam Edelen quipped when he spoke a few minutes later.

After a coin toss between Grimes and McConnell, the 35-year-old Democrat spoke first, blasting McConnell in an 8-minute populist speech for his positions that she said hurts women, seniors, middle class workers and young people — all constituencies she needs to win if she is to beat the five-term incumbent in November.

Referring to an instance in which the McConnell campaign made an ad that included Duke University basketball players rather than University of Kentucky basketball players, and a tweet his campaign sent out making fun of her for using the town of Cloverlick in an ad and then having a TV station say it didn't exist, she said "He's been in Washington, D.C., so long he thinks Duke is in Kentucky and Cloverlick is not."

And she tried to turn the issue of coal around on McConnell — an issue he has bludgeoned her with — announcing that she has received the endorsement of the United Mine Workers of America, which refused to back Obama in 2012.

"When it comes to our Kentucky coal miners, Mitch McConnell doesn't care," she said.

Grimes also hit him on the issue of being too long in Washington. "One of us represents the Washington establishment and one of us represents Kentucky. One of us represents the past, one of us represents the future," she said.

McConnell's first jab landed on not just Grimes but also on Conway and Gov. Steve Beshear, who started his speech by taking a "selfie" with McConnell in the background, and saying he wanted "one last photo before the Kentucky voters retire (McConnell) next November ... and retire him they will."

McConnell harkened back to a past Fancy Farm when Conway referred to himself as "one tough son of a bitch," and Grime's recent statement about the "Iron Dome" missile defense system.

"For you out-of-towners, this is the place where Republicans tell it like it is, Jack Conway curses, Governor Beshear yammers on about Obamacare, and Alison Lundergan Grimes unveils her foreign policy agenda," he said.

He then made a crack about Obama playing golf, a favorite subject of the president's Republican critics, and then listed several things Grimes and Obama have in common, punctuating each one with the phrase, "sound familiar?"

"He was only two years into his first big job when he started campaigning for the next one. Sound familiar? Remember, his campaign raised millions from extreme liberals. Sound familiar?" he said.

And, he suggested that Grimes was a liberal like Obama, who has only been to Kentucky sparingly since being elected. The president doesn't understand the state or share its values, the senator said.

"That's why all these people from the New York Times are out here in Western Kentucky. For Obama and his liberal buddies in the media, coming to Kentucky is like foreign travel," he said.

James R. Carroll can be reached at (703) 854-8945. Follow him on Twitter @JRCarrollCJ. Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.