Former President Bill Clinton barnstormed the Bluegrass State with Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) Wednesday, as Grimes looked to tie herself to her family friend and get some space from President Obama.
{mosads}”I’m not an empty dress! I’m not a cheerleader! I’m not a rubber stamp! But one label I will proudly wear is that of a Clinton Democrat,” Grimes declared during multiple appearances.
Clinton acknowledged the problems Obama created for Grimes in a state where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is unpopular, but the president is even more disliked, and Clinton sought to push back on McConnell’s attacks that she’s “Obama’s Kentucky candidate.”
“He kept acting like she was a clone of the White House,” Clinton said in Lexington. “That man thinks that Kentucky has stopped teaching arithmetic. The White House changes every four years. It will change in two years, and this is a six-year job.”
Grimes’s father, former Kentucky Democratic Party chairman Jerry Lundergan, is a friend and longtime ally of the Clintons, who have helped his daughter on repeated occasions during this campaign. Bill Clinton won Kentucky twice in his presidential campaigns, the last Democratic presidential candidate to do so.
Grimes is locked in a tight race against McConnell.