Why Heather Ryan Should Be Running Against Mitch McConnell

Fancy Farm quick hits:

Mitch McConnell provided by far the best performance art, but only because he pays for it. Even the most rabid Lunsford volunteers couldn't compete.

Mitch brought a posse of baby Nazis from his D.C. office. Some carried triple-decker campaign signs on 20-foot-high staffs. They almost impaled several elderly people wearing republican stickers, and reminded me of those giant standards displayed by Roman emperors.

Other Gestapo-in-training wore long fake black beards and Arab-looking robes and burnooses, wearing signboards that blamed Lunsford, Obama and the Democrats for high gas prices. I sure hope he paid those kids well, because those costumes must have been brutal in the heat. Note to burnoose-wearers: the signboard is not very effective if the words are covered by your trailing headpiece in back and your fake beard in front.


If Heather Ryan doesn't beat Ed Whitfield in November, she should run against Steve Beshear in 2011. Mitch's baby Nazis hung arond long enough to try to scream her down, too, and she let 'em have it. She told the story of how her 12-year-old daughter asking McConnell about Iraq scared little Mitchie so much he got Heather fired.

"So thank you for being such a thin-skinned coward, Mitch," Ryan called out. "Because if you weren't, I wouldn't be here!"

(More and more pictures after the jump.)
At the Graves County Democratic Party breakfast before Fancy Farm, Ryan's speech was by far the best, beating even Lunsford for red-meat-throwing and drawing a standing, stamping, whistling ovation second only to the one for Lunsford.


Bruce Lunsford, dammit, gave the second-best speech of the day (after Heather.) Despite having to talk over non-stop screaming from Mitch's baby Nazis and their sitters ("Six More Years!"), he gave far better than he got and sounded - much as I hate to admit it - far more Senatorial than Mitch ever has.


McConnell and Kentucky's other Senator, Jim Bunning, read their speeches, barely lifting their heads or changing their tone, while Ryan, Lunsford, Beshear and Mongiardo spoke heads up and eyes forward (no teleprompters at Fancy Farm.)

The republicans don't seem to know who they're running against. The cardboard fan passed out to republicans had a list of republican talking points on one side and a list of republican candidates on the other side. Kentucky dems aren't always well-organized, but we can spot one of our own candidates at a good 10 feet.

McConnell and Bunning both seemed confused about who their opponents are. Neither one of them mentioned Lunsford, Ryan, Beshear, Mongiardo, or any other Kentuckian.


Mitch is running against some guy named Obama who bears no resemblance to the presumptive Democratic nominee but apparently has been going around Kentucky personally raising gas prices.

Bunning is running against long-married grandmother Nancy Pelosi, whose heterosexal, monogamous, child-rearing values scare Jimmy to death.

Ed Whitfield, who never mentioned his actual opponent Heather Ryan, seems to think he's running against Bruce Lunsford. That may be because this supposed representative of Kentucky's First Congressional District doesn't actually live here; his actual residence is - and has been for several years - in Florida. That's 500 miles and at least three states away from Western Kentucky, Ed.

Ed also doesn't know - or doesn't care - that it's illegal to remove another candidate's signs. His supporters couldn't stand that the home-made-in-her-front-yard Heather Ryan signs outnumbered Whitfield's expensively printed signs along U.S. 80 approaching Fancy Farm, so they pulled them up. Cowards. Criminals. Losers.

The Ditch Mitch crowd had some cute signage on U.S. 80: a series of large boards listing Mitch's crimes and corporate cop-outs over the last 24 years. If only the anti-McConnell movement had a candidate worth fighting for.

Climate conditions were 92 degrees and 45 percent humidity - practically sweater-weather for experienced Fancy Farmers used to 100 degrees with matching humidity. The new covered pavilion is not an improvement: the bleachers block the view of the speakers from everyone in the grass outside the pavilion, and the increased body heat from people crammed inside cancels out the cooling effect of shade.

Herald's coverage here, and here, Courier's here. Page One watched KET's coverage and comments here. KET webcast the whole thing.

And Kilowat has great pix here, here, here, here and here.

And of course Jim Pence was there taking video all day long.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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Heather Ryan Declares for Congress

Navy veteran and Mitch McConnell nemesis Heather Ryan has filed to run for Congress as a Democrat, challenging Ed Whitfield, R-KY 1.

Two weeks ago, Heather's 12-year-old daughter Heaven confronted U.S. Senate Minority Leader McConnell in downtown Paducah, KY, demanding to know why Mitch wants her active-duty Navy dad to die in Iraq.

Mitch ran away from the adorable but determined red-head, then retaliated by extorting the city of Paducah into firing Heaven's mother from her job as executive director of a non-profit independent theater.

Hillbilly has the video at BlueGrassRoots, and this to say:

It's a shame when a little girl tries to ask a US Senator about her father, and it results in her mother, a military veteran, losing her job. Now the child has two things to worry about, her mother and her father. Shame on you Senator Mitch McConnell!!!

If you've never heard of Congressman Ed Whitfield, don't feel bad; neither has anyone else. In his 13 years in Congress, he hasn't done one single blessed thing, as far as anyone can tell. Nobody seems to know what he looks like.

Here's the fun part: until Heather Ryan filed to run against Whitfield, Eddie-boy had no opposition.

Scratch that: until a 12-year-old-girl terrified the third-most-powerful Republican in the nation into grossly over-reacting to a simple question, republican Ed Whitfield was set to sail to re-election.

Now, Eddie-boy, who I daresay is barely known at the Republican National Committee, faces opposition from a woman who has already gotten national publicity for standing up to McConnell.

In a year when people are going to be voting for anybody and everybody with a D next to their names.

Well done, Mitch. Your diabolical plan to take over the country by destroying the Kentucky Republican Party appears to be ahead of schedule.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

[That's all...no more after the jump.]

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Contribute to Mitch's Democratic Challenger Today!

Afraid we don't have an actual name for you yet, but we do have an official Campaign Fund that will go to whoever wins the Democratic Primary May 20.

As Media Czech at BlueGrassRoots puts it:

Hey folks, are you ready to Ditch Mitch? Are you ready to get rid of his corporate cash funded brand of politics? Do you want to kick out the man who would rather obstruct popular legislation than move our country forward in a new direction? Do you want to help end his pay-for-play conduct that puts his contributors above his KY constituents?

Well, it's going to require $$$$. And Mitch is sitting on one hell of a lot of it. But that doesn't make him invulnerable, as his disapprovals have eclipsed his approvals for the first time.

We at BlueGrassRoots are making another call to pony up whatever you can to our ActBlue page for Mitch's eventual challenger on the Democratic side of the aisle. No matter whether your favored horse in the race is Crit, Greg, Andrew, or some random rich guy, this will go to the Democrat who wins the primary.

As for who will be running in that primary, this Christmas Present to the Nation is labeled "Do Not Open Until January 29."

That's the deadline for filing as a candidate for U.S. Senator from Kentucky - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's increasingly shaky seat.

By then, there should be at least two top-tier Democrats in the race, in addition to the Novice (Louisville pain doctor Michael Cassaro) and the Joke (perennial candidate and nominal Democrat David L. Williams) who have already announced.
(Find out who after the jump.)

Playing hard-to-get are State Auditor Crit Luallen, scandal-plagued State Attorney General Greg Stumbo, and Iraq combat veteran Lt. Col. Andrew Horne.

Crit is playing footsie with Chuck Schumer, Horne is waiting on Crit, as he's unlikely to challenge her if she runs, and Stumbo is raising money for polls that don't mean what he thinks they mean.

Page One Kentucky has a superb run-down of the pros and cons for each potential candidate, and makes an eloquent plea for the ditherers to get off the pot:

The time has come for potential Democratic candidates for the United States Senate to jump in the race. It’s now or never. An entire month has been wasted by the numerous potentials as they waffle back and forth.

Full disclosure: I'm an Andrew Horne fan. I agree completely with this analysis of why Horne is the best candidate.

I love Crit and think she would have been a fabulous governor and would be a great Senator, but her decision last year to sit out the Governor's race against a fatally wounded incumbent tells me she's not really interested in higher office. She's also way too smart to think she can overcome the bad will she'd create announcing a run for Senate two months after winning re-election to another four-year term as Auditor.

Greg Stumbo squandered his reputation for political smarts and his status as a hero for investigating ousted repug governor Ernie Fletcher by hitching his star to Democratic Traitor Bruce Lunsford in the gubernatorial primary. I think Stumbo is by far the weakest of the top-tier Democrats.

Page One mentions other possible candidates, and provides more objective analysis.
I'll predict right now the Democratic challenger to Mitch McConnell is going to be either Andrew Horne or Greg Stumbo. Either one will draw substantial national support.

But you don't have to wait! Get in on the Biggest Non-Presidential Race of 2008 now. Grab a good seat on the soon-to-be-crowded bandwagon. Contribute to Mitch's Democratic Challenger today.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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Mitch McConnell Sinking Almost as Fast as Ernie

BlueGrass Roots has the latest beat-down on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY.

A new SurveyUSA poll shows that Mitch McConnell's approval ratings have plummeted 8 points over the last month to an all-time low of 45%.

And it won't get any easier for Mitch, as MoveOn is backing this news up with a Huge ad buy right here in KY.

The poll's breakdown of voters is even worse than that.

Mitch fails to gain more than 50 percent approval among either sex, any race, any age group, any generation, or any geographical area. The only two groups who give him an approval rating above 50 percent are conservatives and republicans.

Mitch may have $9 million in the bank, but unless he's going to use it to literally buy Kentucky voters one at a time between now and November 2008, it's not going to do him much good.

Get on the Ditch Mitch bandwagon now!

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Mitch McConnell Sinking Almost as Fast as Ernie" >>

Tiny Kentucky Town ROCKS for J.E.

UPDATE Below

They laughed back in June when Shawn Dixon launched his impossible crusade to bring a presidential candidate to his minuscule hometown of Columbus, Kentucky, population - wait for it - 229. That's two hundred and twenty-nine whole, entire people.

They were laughing in triumph Thursday when more than six times Columbus' population showed up to cheer Shawn and his guest, Democratic Presidential Candidate John Edwards.

Shawn was previously known as one of the geniuses behind Ditch Mitch KY, the galactic effort to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, next year. DMKY's coverage includes fabulous YouTube video from Kentucky blogging legend Jim Pence of Hillbilly Report(scroll down for two videos.)

Oh, yeah, some local rag inside the Beltway sent a reporter, too.

UPDATE, 5:46 p.m.Check out this great photo album of snapshots from the event. Note Best-of-America crowd shots of ages one month to 80 years, white 60-something male Vietnam veteran next to African-American female 30-something. Yes, that's the Mississippi River in the background, and that good-looking kid with the Better Hair Than John Edwards is Shawn Dixon Himself.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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