An embarrassment of Democrats (2): Grimes edition

I know Democrats can’t be embarrassed. When I refer to “an embarrassment of Democrats,” I am trying to capture the natural reaction of average Americans to the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the embarrassment of Democrats (as I call them) seeking higher office this November. Among them is one Alison Lundergran Grimes.

Grimes seeks to knock off Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from reelection to the seat he holds representing the great state of Kentucky. When it comes to public policy, McConnell is a serious guy. He is a long-time defender of the speech rights of citizens that are assaulted in the name of campaign finance reform and regulation.

Grimes is something of a numbnuts. She thinks that Israel’s Iron Dome protects it from Hamas’s terror tunnels. Really. That ought to suggest that she’s not ready for prime time. She’s secretive about her views on important issues such as Obamacare and illegal immigration. What’s she hiding? I think she might be a liberal.

My daughter Eliana took a look at the contending campaigns in “Kicking off the Kentucky Senate race.” Eliana observed how Grimes is working the Democrats’ appeal to low-information voters. Grimes touts the usual crock, portraying McConnell as an opponent of gender equality. According to Grimes: “[O]nly one of us believes women deserve equal pay for equal work.”

Renowned feminist Bill Clinton has already made an appearance on behalf of Grimes and I’m sure he’ll be back for more, so to speak. As a big feminist, of course, Grimes includes her dad among her principal assets. He’s got a good name in Kentucky politics and he has become a wealthy man along the way. He has gone to great, perhaps even illegal, lengths to help his daughter in the race. Manu Raju reports at Politico Pro (behind Pro’s subscription paywall) that Grimes may be the beneficiary of an illegal in-kind contribution from her father:

Alison Lundergan Grimes has barnstormed Kentucky in her 45-foot-long campaign bus, rolling up to raucous campaign events and posing for photos next to the vehicle bearing an oversize image of the Democratic Senate hopeful.

Left unmentioned amid the hubbub is this: Her father’s company acquired the bus just as the campaign got under way last year — and is renting it to his daughter for a fraction of what other companies would typically charge, according to a POLITICO analysis. Federal campaign finance law bars a campaign from receiving goods and services below the fair market value from a corporation, regardless of whether it is owned by a family member.

A review of Federal Election Commission records shows Grimes paid less than $11,000 through June to rent the bus for at least 24 days, amounting to about $456 per day. Officials at four bus companies said they typically charge $1,500 to $2,000 a day to rent a similarly sized bus, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign said it spent at least $2,200 per day to rent essentially the same bus during a swing earlier this month. That would amount to a savings of tens of thousands of dollars for the Democrat’s campaign.

The Grimes campaign denies wronging, but Raju appears to have the goods in a detailed and well-researched story.

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