KENTUCKY’S
KING
down. The town’s post-war pastels have given way to rust, padlocks and contaminated waterways. After three decades under
McConnell, Kentucky residents
are wondering whether his survival is good for them.
Up for reelection again in 2014,
McConnell faces dismal polling
numbers. In January, a CourierJournal Bluegrass Poll found that
only 17 percent of residents said
they were planning on voting for
him. A recent Public Policy Polling
survey showed him tied in a hypothetical race against Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s Democratic secretary of state, weeks
before she announced she was
running on July 1. Today, McConnell finds himself at both the most
powerful and most vulnerable
moment of his career. He faces not
only a Democratic opposition out
to avenge McConnell’s attacks on
Obama, but an energized tea party
unhappy with the GOP establishment and independents disgusted
with Washington.
Keith Runyon was a veteran reporter and editorial page editor for
the Louisville-based Courier-Journal, Kentucky’s dominant statewide paper, which has generations
of close personal ties to state and
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
TODAY, McCONNELL FINDS
HIMSELF AT BOTH THE MOST
POWERFUL AND MOST
VULNERABLE MOMENT OF
HIS CAREER.
national Democrats. He witnessed
McConnell’s rise in Louisville and
its suburbs of Jefferson County. He
met his future wife, Meme Sweets,
when she worked as McConnell’s
press secretary after his election
as the county’s judge-executive.
Runyon came to know McConnell
well. He says that McConnell was
not always such a ruthless partisan obstructionist.
“It was not the local Mitch McConnell that became the problem,” he told HuffPost. “It was
what he became when he went to
Washington.”
In 2006, the former editor and
publisher of the liberal CourierJournal, Barry Bingham Jr., 72,
“was dying and knew it,” Runyon
says. A week before his death in
early April, he summoned Runyon
to his home.
When he arrived on that balmy
morning, Runyon recalls, Bingham
was sitting up in a chair in his
library. A breeze was drifting in
through the windows. Among the