Joe Gerth

Louisville

Alison Lundergan Grimes has gone up with a 60-second radio ad across Kentucky, criticizing President Barack Obama because of his new coal policy and promising, "Mr. President, you'll be hearing it a lot more when I'm in the senate."

She also uses the spot to criticize McConnell for not doing enough to protect Kentucky coal jobs and for saying during a recent interview that it wasn't his jobs to bring jobs to the town of Beattyville, Ky.

The ad is the latest salvo in Grimes' attempt to separate herself from Obama on the issue of coal, while U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell tries to link her to the president who was already unpopular here even before the proposed coal regulations were handed down this week.

Those regulations would seek to cut carbon emissions from existing coal burning power plants by 30 percent by the year 2030 and by 83 percent by the year 2050. It's part of Obama's attempt to reduce the nation's impact on global climate change.

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In a release Wednesday morning, the McConnell campaign accused Grimes of being late to the pro-coal party.

"It is a fact that Alison Lundergan Grimes lined up as a delegate behind Barack Obama after he announced he would wage a war on coal and said nothing as thousands of Kentuckians lost their jobs," said Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for McConnell.

"Her belated concern about the war on coal now that she's a candidate, after helping to ensure it by backing Obama, is insulting and transparently political," she said.

McConnell has said he was taken out of context by the editor of the Beattyville newspaper that quoted him saying job creation wasn't his responsibility.

The ad, titled "Mr. President," is part of a multimedia ad campaign Grimes unveiled Monday after the proposed regulations were released. Additionally, the campaign bought full page ads in newspapers in coal-rich eastern and western Kentucky that have a coal miner holding a chunk of coal, with the words, "President Obama and Washington don't get it … Alison Grimes does."

In the radio ad, Grimes tells Obama, "Mr. President, Kentucky has lost one-third of our coal jobs in just the last three years. Now your EPA is targeting Kentucky coal with pie in the sky regulations that are impossible to achieve.

"It's clear you have no idea how this affects Kentucky. Coal supplies 92 percent of our state's electricity. Your new regulations will lead to severe rate increases, shortages of power and the loss of even more coal jobs.

"Kentucky already has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country. It's bad enough we've lost 18 thousand coal jobs since Mitch McConnell became senator. It's even worse that Senator McConnell says it's not his job to bring jobs to Kentucky. Now you give us this."

Coal figures to be a central issue in the campaign.