DOUGLAS GRAHAM/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/GETTY IMAGES
KENTUCKY’S
KING
ily responsible for making us a
Republican state,” says Al Cross,
the veteran political reporter and
director of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.
When longtime and popular
Democratic Sen. Wendell Ford
decided not to seek reelection in
1998, McConnell saw an opportunity to expand his political empire. He’d been Kentucky’s first
Republican senator in 12 years.
Now, as chairman of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee
(NRSC), he tapped Rep. Jim Bunning, who had won six consecutive House elections, to grab the
other Senate seat.
“He was the chairman of the
committee, and he was recruiting,” says longtime Bunning aide
Jon Deuser. “They had a great
working relationship.”
Bunning’s opponent, Rep.
Scotty Baesler, cut the profile of a
promising Democratic politician.
He was known across the state as
a college basketball star for the
University of Kentucky’s iconic
coach Adolph Rupp. He’d worked
as an attorney providing free services to the poor before being
elected mayor of Lexington.
Baesler had used his political
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
capital to implement key support
programs for seniors and anti-drug
initiatives targeting schoolchildren. During the 1998 campaign,
he helped push the Clinton administration into providing more
than $19 million to overhaul public
housing in Lexington and provide
job training programs for the city’s
poor. He was the pragmatic liberal
alternative to McConnell.
Bunning had only one innate
advantage over Baesler: He’d had
the more distinguished sporting
career as a Hall of Fame pitcher
for the Philadelphia Phillies and
Detroit Tigers. He’d thrown a nohitter and a perfect game. As a
politician, however, Bunning never
When Rep.
Scotty
Baesler (left)
ran for the
Senate seat
opposite
McConnell
in 1998,
McConnell
ran a series
of attack
ads that
effectively
ended his
career in
national
politics.