Kentucky Democratic Senate hopeful Allison Lundergan Grimes is coming under fire for telling Kentuckians that she is not the typical DC politician, but then schmoozing with DC’s elite Democratic politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.).
Last week, her campaign promised that an expensive fundraiser with Harry Reid would be used as a forum to promote Kentucky’s coal industry and to mandate action that would protect the use of fossil fuel.
Lundergan Grimes failed to deliver on her promise, instead choosing to bask in Harry Reid’s lavish praise. The Nevada Senator called the Kentucky Senate hopeful "the perfect candidate" and "something special."
So taken with his compliments, Lundergan Grimes failed to mention the word "coal" once during her fundraiser with him, the very reason for which her campaign said she was hosting the fundraiser.
Grimes campaign told the press on Monday that she had "strong" words for Reid about her disdain for President’ Obama’s new EPA regulations and how they will harmfully affect Kentucky families and claimed that the two spoke in private about the matter.
A source told Politico, however, that it would have been impossible for the intimate conversation between Lundergan Grimes and Reid to have happened. "There is no way" Grimes and Reid could have spoken in private, the source told Politico, citing the Nevada Senator’s late arrival to the fundraiser and his early departure.
Politico’s Manu Raju weighed in on the Lundergan Grimes gaffe, telling CNN’s John King "And as we’ve seen, all these red state Democrats who are running right now are trying to show distance from the President, so distance from the National Democratic Party… When she comes to Washington, it says something different. It shows that maybe she’s not what she says she is and this is going to be a problem for her going forward."