Clinton to campaign for Kentucky Dem

Hillary Clinton will rally support for Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-Ky.) at a campaign event next week.

Clinton will speak this Wednesday at a convention center in Louisville and Democratic Party headquarters across Kentucky will offer free tickets to the public event.

{mosads}Grimes is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for a seat that Democrats would love to flip.

McConnell has led for much of the race, but Democrats hope they can still flip the seat with the help of surrogates like Clinton.

“Alison is honored to have Hillary Rodham Clinton on the campaign trail with her less than one month before this important election,” Jonathan Hurst, Grimes’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “Alison has been a long-time supporter and admirer of Clinton’s leadership and independence, and is humbled that she will be in Kentucky to endorse her campaign and her plan to get Washington working for Kentucky.”

The Clintons’ have strong ties to Grimes: former President Bill Clinton is a friend of the family and rallied for Grimes in Kentucky twice this year. Footage from one of those events appeared in a recent Grimes campaign ad touting the former president’s support.

McConnell has been consistently ahead in the polls, though the Grimes campaign got some good news when a new poll this week found her leading by 2 points.

But Grimes is now dealing with criticism over her refusal to answer questions about whether she voted for President Obama.

Obama is not popular in Kentucky, and Republicans have worked hard to tie her to the White House.

Clinton also plans to travel to Iowa, Colorado, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Georgia and Colorado to campaign for Democrats in what some see as a soft-launch for a 2016 campaign. Those events will give her a chance to rally the troops in a number of strategically important states before she announces a decision on whether she will run for president.