Election Coverage

Joe Arnold can speak it faster than I can write it, so I am not attempting to live-blog.

No surprises, and most races are working out for the good of the citizenry.

Greg Fischer much improved his performance over his race for U.S. Senate. Those public speaking lessons paid off! So did his ability to attract conservative Republican support early on -- that will come back to bite Hal Heiner in the general election. Many of these conservatives might not have been registered to vote for Fischer in the Democratic primary. It didn't matter; they gave him credibility (and cash) early on.

Hal Heiner was plainly the better choice for Republicans in the primary. Chris Theineman's maverick streak made him look unserious. Gadflies are fun, but they cannot govern effectively in the executive branch.

In the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, the polling, unfortunately, proved correct. This is not a surprise in some respects. When I saw the huge crowd at John Yarmuth's town hall last August -- the diversity of age, race and income -- it was clear that the Tea Party movement was real and powerful, and that Rand Paul was best positioned to exploit its restless anger.

Trey Grayson's concession speech was, like Trey, the act of a consummate gentleman. It made me sad to watch. And it made me recall a fundraiser for the Kentucky Federation of Republican Women. Trey's wife and girls were fashion models for the fundraiser, taking it all with a big grain of salt and just having fun. As the event wore on and the girls got tired, one of them crawled into Trey's lap and put her head on his shoulder. It was a side of Trey Grayson that voters never saw. This man who has done such an excellant job as Secretary of State, who is such a straight shooter, ran in the wrong year. He would have been a U.S. Senator who could have achieved real change. He would have been the grown-up in the room, not a gadfly.

I understand why Dr. Paul won. Dr. Paul is an appealing candidate in many ways. He is a fiscal and social conservative. He respects the constitution as a framework for limited government. But I fear that he is very naive on national security and foreign policy, and that is why I could not support him in the primary.

It appears that Jack Conway will win the Democratic primary, although Mongiardo has not conceded and the AP has not called the race.

On the one hand, as a Republican I should probably regret Conway winning the primary. I have maintained from the outset that he is the harder candidate to beat. But as a Kentuckian and an American, I am glad that he is going to win because if he carries the general election, he will be a much better U.S. Senator than Dan Mongiardo. There was something off-putting about Mongiardo -- not just his appearance, or his demeanor, but his meanness. His message of class warfare was unworthy of Kentucky.