Whoa! Lunsford Leads in Rasmussen Poll

According to Rasmussen Reports, Bruce Lunsford is currently leading Sen. Mitch McConnell by 49 to 44%. This has to be disappointing to McConnell who is sitting on a huge campaign war chest and has been running apparently ineffective commercials for months.

Nobody should kid themselves about whether Mitch McConnell is a formidable opponent. He's one of the smartest people in American politics and he's served four terms in the U. S. Senate despite fundamentally unlikable, having little campaign charisma, and swimming against popular opinion. It's very odd to say this about someone who is a four-term Senator and major political figure, but my impression of McConnell is that he's never been very popular in Kentucky. He's just been a lot smarter and more effective than his Democratic opponents. What's been particularly distinct about McConnell's re-election campaigns in 1990 and 1996 has been his clever use of negative advertising to establish big leads over his opponents for re-election and then hang on as voters started turning to the Democratic candidate.

But the tide running against McConnell might be too strong this time. Now serving as Republican leader in the Senate, McConnell has become a point man for unpopular Bush administration positions on the war, economy, veterans legislation, corruption, and other issues. McjConnell is also a holdover from the big money politics and hyper-partisanship of the Newt Gingrich/Tom DeLay era in Republican politics. Today's Rasmussen survey looks like a sign that Sen. McConnell is not going to be able to use negative ads to jump out to a quick lead and that that he is going to have to go out and press the flesh and really campaign if he wants to hold on to his seat.

McConnel is already trying to tie Lunsford to Barack Obama, but it's not like Lunsford has Obama-type political skills or is a particlarly strong candidate. However, Lunsford has name recognition from previous campaigns for governor and also has access to plenty of money.

That might be enough.