Kentucky Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) released a new web ad Thursday featuring the story of an Eastern Kentucky resident who castigates Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for not paying enough attention to the region.
Grimes, the presumed Democratic nominee, and McConnell, who faces a Republican primary challenge from businessman Matt Bevin, have been trading early attacks in the race.
In a release, the Grimes campaign said the resident's testimonial "highlights the stark contrast" between the candidates when it comes to economic issues.
"Unlike Mitch McConnell, Alison understands that unemployment and under-employment are more than a set of numbers; they are the stories of real people," the Grimes campaign said in its release. "After spending nearly 30 years in Washington, McConnell is out of touch with hardworking Kentuckians and consistently chooses partisanship over people."
In the ad, David Kennedy, a local business owner and magistrate in Harlan County, discusses the county's high employment rate and loss of coal industry jobs.
"The big problem that I see with Mitch McConnell is just the simple fact that he's been in Washington for too long. We know he has the ability to help us, we know he can do that, we don't understand why he's not," Kennedy states in the spot.
The ad references the jobs plan Grimes released last week.
“Mitch McConnell has been in there for 30 years, and I have yet to see his jobs plan," Kennedy says.
McConnell's campaign released an ad Wednesday in which another Kentucky resident, Robert Pierce, voices support for McConnell for the work the senator did to help workers affected by health issues after working in a uranium enrichment plant.
A Grimes campaign spokesman told The Huffington Post that Grimes "is passionate about pocketbook (meat and potato) issues, and these are themes we'll continue to talk about for the duration of the campaign." The staffer cited raising the minimum wage, closing the gender pay gap and bringing American jobs back from overseas as issues that Grimes will emphasize.
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