Tag Archives: #CharlesBooker

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The Lexington Herald-Leader makes another losing endorsement

To the surprise of absolutely no one, what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal endorsed Charles Booker for the Senate seat currently held by Rand Paul (R-KY). The newspaper has endorsed every Democrat in every competitive race:

The newspaper’s Editorial Board lamented:

It is frustrating that the national Democratic establishment has not seen fit to support Booker’s campaign; that brain trust apparently thinks it’s more worthwhile to give millions of dollars to right-wing candidates in Republican primaries instead of helping to boost the message of credible candidates.

That’s kind of what happens when the Democrats of today have nothing on which to run except their hatred for Donald Trump. Continue reading →

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When you’re a desperation candidate, you might as well take desperation shots!

I follow former state Representative Charles Booker (D-43rd District, Louisville) on Twitter not because I like him, but because he is a candidate, and now the Democratic nominee, to challenge Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in the general election. Mr Booker, who ran for the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in 2020, but lost a tightly contested primary to Amy McGrath Henderson, was running to Mrs McGrath’s left, as the ‘progressive’ candidate. He hasn’t changed that a bit.

Knowing that he’s running, at the most charitably, an uphill campaign, or, perhaps most realistically, a sacrificial lamb one, Mr Booker is taking wild, long-range three-point shots in the hope of somehow catching up to Dr Paul.[1]I almost typed ‘Hail Mary’ shots, but I would never use a Catholic comparison, in any way, with regard to a candidate who supports abortion. It should be noted, that, as a Kentuckian, I … Continue reading The latest is shown in this tweet.

Mr Booker’s new campaign ad is all about lynchings in the past, and he claims that three of his uncles were lynched. But while lynchings have occurred, they are very much in the past. Even the Lexington Herald-Leader, which endorsed Mr Booker against Mrs Henderson in 2020, and which will endorse him again for the general election, because the editors are both stunningly liberal and out of tune with their readership, noted just how “striking” and “unconventional” the ad is: Continue reading →

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↑1 I almost typed ‘Hail Mary’ shots, but I would never use a Catholic comparison, in any way, with regard to a candidate who supports abortion. It should be noted, that, as a Kentuckian, I worked in a basketball metaphor.
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Charles Booker is running for the Senate

In news which is no surprise, former state Representative Charles Booker has declared for the Democratic nomination to face incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in the 2022 election.

Mr Booker said last March that he was “strongly considering” running for the Senate in 2022, and, as we have previously noted, in April formed an exploratory committee on the subject. Continue reading →

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Charles Booker’s misplaced priorities

Charles Booker, from his Twitter profile.

As I previously noted, the hearts of the editors of the what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal must have been all aflutter when former, one-term state Representative Charles Booker (D-43rd District) of Louisville announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to see if he should run for the 2022 Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). In 2020, the editors endorsed the hard-left Mr Booker against faux moderate Amy McGrath Henderson for the nomination to run against Senator Mitch McConnell. After Mrs Henderson won the primary by an unexpectedly-close margin, the editors endorsed her against Mr McConnell, where she lost in a landslide.

Well, being the news junkie that I am, I went ahead and followed Mr Booker on Twitter, and he had this one up on Tuesday:

Really? Well, a whole lot of Kentuckians would disagree with Mr Booker. In 2010, Dr Paul defeated Democratic nominee Jack Conway, who had already won a statewide election to become the state’s Attorney General, 755,411 (55.69%) to 599,617 (44.26%) to win his seat in the United States Senate. Anything over 10% is considered a landslide win. Then, in 2016, Senator Paul defeated then-Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington 1,090,177 (57.27%) to 813,246 (42.73%) for re-election.

Mitch McConnell? In 2014, Senator McConnell defeated Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes 806,787 (56.2%) to 584,698 (40.7%), and in 2020 he stomped Mrs Henderson 1,233,315 (57.8%) to 816,257 (38.2%), despite her spending $90.8 million to ‘just’ $60 million by the incumbent senator.

If you visit Mr Booker’s (exploratory) campaign website, you’ll see a letter from him on the front page. In it, he said, “We all want a society where every single person can be safe in their homes without the fear of being killed by the government agencies we pay to protect us.”

Yeah, I get it: he’s channeling the killing of Breonna Taylor, the ex-girlfriend of a notorious Louisville drug dealer, who died when police returned fire from her then current boyfriend when they broke in, serving a legitimate no-knock warrant.

But, really, Mr Booker is worried about people being killed in their homes by police, an extremely rare event, when, as of May 30th, there had been 76 murders in his home town?

That’s 30 more murders than at the same time in 2020, a 65.22% increase. It was more than double the 33 homicides at the same time in 2019.

Louisville saw 92 criminal homicides in 2019, and almost doubled it to 173 in 2020. Louisville is currently on pace for a new record of 185 murders for 2021, and the long, hot summer hasn’t begun yet, but Mr Booker is worried about Breonna Taylor? One of us believes that Mr Booker’s priorities are misplaced.

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Wishful thinking in the Herald-Leader?

The hearts of the editors of the what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal must have been all aflutter when former state Representative Charles Booker (D-Louisville) announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to see if he should run for the 2022 Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). In 2020, the editors endorsed the hard-left Mr Booker against faux moderate Amy McGrath Henderson for the nomination to run against Senator Mitch McConnell. After Mrs Henderson won the primary by an unexpectedly-close margin, the editors endorsed her against Mr McConnell, where she lost in a landslide.

We have previously noted the newspaper’s endorsements, and they are all to the left:

But the editors, as wrong-headed as they are in their policy choices, aren’t ignorant when it comes to Kentucky politics. And so I came upon this oh-so-hopeful article about a moderate Kentucky Democrat:

Political Notebook: Could Rocky Adkins be Kentucky’s Joe Manchin in 2022 Senate race?

By Daniel Desrochers | April 16, 2021 | 3:39 PM | Updated April 16, 2021 | 4:29 PM EDT

At a bill-signing ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda last week, Rocky Adkins did what he’s been doing for 34 years in politics.

He worked the room.

The tall man from the left hand fork of the middle fork of the Little Sandy River congratulated the people who got the bill passed. He cracked a joke with House Minority Leader Joni Jenkins. He acted surprised when a reporter told him that his name kept getting mentioned as a possible U.S. Senate candidate.

“What are they saying?” asked Adkins, a senior adviser to Gov. Andy Beshear.

They are saying there is potential for a competitive Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 2022 against former state Rep. Charles Booker, who formed an exploratory committee Monday. They are saying it might take a specific kind of conservative Democrat to win statewide in Kentucky. They are saying it’s Rocky Adkins.

They are also saying a run by Adkins is unlikely.

There’s much more at the original.

It wasn’t so long ago that Kentucky was a thoroughly Democratic state. In 1971, when I first registered to vote in Mt Sterling, I registered as a Republican. Come the general election, I found out that I had exactly zero voice, as all of the members of the city council had been selected in the Democratic primary, as no Republican candidates even filed, there being so few of them, and knowing that they had no chance. It was a lesson that many conservative Kentuckians learned.

Many Democrats have tried to run as moderates in the Bluegrass State. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes tried in her Senate campaign against Mr McConnell in 2014; she lost in a landslide. Mrs Henderson tried it in 2020, but nobody believed her, not after she was caught on tape in 2018, while raising money in Massachusetts to run against Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) saying, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” and Senator McConnell stomped her even harder than he had Mrs Grimes.

Of course, while the editors of the Herald-Leader would prefer a much more ‘progressive’ candidate, they’d be perfectly happy with Mr Adkins in the Senate, because the most important vote a Senator has is the one at the beginning of the session, the one which organizes the Senate by party, the one which determines which party will control the agenda. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and votes with Republicans reasonably frequently, but it is his being a Democrat and not a Republican which has made Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) the Senate Majority Leader, rather than Mr McConnell.

Kentuckians are Republicans now, because Kentuckians are conservatives. While there are a lot of conservative Democrats in the Bluegrass State, they are older; they are Democrats because they have always been Democrats. It has been their sons and daughters who registered as Republicans. That’s why, in the 2020 elections, the voters of the Commonwealth gave the GOP 75 out of 100 seats in the state House of Representatives, an increase of 14 seats, and 30 out of 38 seats in the state Senate, an increase of two seats.[1]Only 17 of the 38 state Senate seats were up for election in 2020.

And the last thing Kentucky’s voters want to see is the Democrats solidifying their current 50/50 split in the Senate, holding the majority only because Democrat Kamala Harris Emhoff is Vice President and President of the Senate.

The Herald-Leader article notes that Mr Adkins is unlikely to run; he’s not exactly the sacrificial lamb type. But if Kentucky’s Democrats do nominate Mr Adkins, or his political doppelganger, it will be to do one thing, and one thing only: keep the Democrats in control of the United States Senate, and not to represent the beliefs of Kentuckians.

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↑1 Only 17 of the 38 state Senate seats were up for election in 2020.