Grimes hits McConnell on women’s issues

Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes is hitting Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on women’s issues in her newest ad, the latest in a series featuring regular Kentucky citizens.

{mosads}In the new ad, Ilene Woods of Lynch, Ky., asks McConnell why he voted twice against the Violence Against Women Act and “against enforcing equal pay for women.”

After a moment of silence, Grimes says, “I can never get him to answer this one either.”

She adds, to McConnell: “I approved this message, because senator, you must be forgetting that over half the voters in Kentucky are women like Ilene.”

The charge that McConnell opposed the Violence Against Women Act and equal pay legislation is central to Grimes’s pitch to female voters. McConnell’s team has pushed back, arguing that he was originally a co-sponsor of the bill and only voted against it twice because he felt one changed version of the bill went too far, and because once it was attached to a ban on assault weapons.

Women do make up a sizeable portion of the Kentucky electorate, and they’re critical to Grimes’s chances of taking down the senator. He’s consistently suffered a significant gender gap in most polls of the race, but the most recent survey, which showed him slightly ahead of Grimes, only gave her a 1 percentage point lead with female voters.

But she faced scrutiny on Wednesday over comments she made that indicated a lack of familiarity with the Iron Dome, Israel’s air defense system.

Asked by the Herald-Leader about congressional support for the missile system, she suggested it prevented terrorists from “tunneling” into Israel.

“Obviously, Israel is one of our strongest allies in the Middle East, and she has the right to defend herself,” Grimes said. “But the loss of life, especially the innocent civilians in Gaza, is a tragedy. The Iron Dome has been a big reason why Israel has been able to withstand the terrorists that have tried to tunnel their way in.”

“At a time when President Obama and his Administration seem so out of their depth in protecting American interests abroad, Kentucky and the entire country require U.S. Senators who understand our place in the world and have the capability of leading,” she said. “Alison Lundergan Grimes demonstrated once again that she not only is incapable of leading, but once she gets beyond the Obama talking points she has a frightening lack of understanding on consequential issues confronting our nation.”

— This piece was updated to reflect Grimes’s comments on Israel.