He’s “hangin’ in there like a sack of oats,” Dizzy Dean used to say of a tough out on the CBS Game of the Week.

The same might be said of Kentucky Democratic senatorial candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes. A recent PPP poll has her up by a point – 45-44 over Sen. Mitch McConnell, her all but certain GOP challenger in the November election.

Grimes has no serious opposition in next month’s Democratic primary. Polls show McConnell way ahead of tea party darling Matt Bevin in the GOP primary.

Polling on a Grimes-McConnell matchup tells a decidedly different story. The Democratic-leaning PPP poll follows a GOP-tilting Wenzel Strategies poll in February that had McConnell on top, 43 to 42. That poll came not long after an independent Survey USA Bluegrass Poll that had Grimes out front, 46 to 42.

Money is breaking her way, too. Grimes outraised McConnell in the first quarter of this year, raking in a cool $2.7 million. Grimes also collected more cash than he did in the last quarter of last year.

Any way you crunch the numbers, Grimes is “hangin’ in there like a sack of oats.”

Grimes is 35 and in her first term as Kentucky secretary of state. The five-term McConnell, more than twice her age, probably figured she’d be an easy out.

He doubtless expected to fan her with the dreaded curveball, “liberal.”

Grimes is a moderate by Bluegrass State standards.

Measured against a national yardstick, she’s moderately conservative.

But compared to the GOP of McConnell, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and “Asparagus” Ghomert, Grimes is Che Guevara crooning The Internationale.

Anyway, the righty McConnell keeps serving up hanging sliders and she keeps knocking ’em out of the park.

“If the doctors told Sen. McConnell he had a kidney stone, he would refuse to pass it,” was her first round-tripper.

Team Mitch seems to be swinging and missing a lot lately. After the CPAC flintlock fiasco came the campaign commercial clunker with the Duke hoopsters.

The other day, Grimes swatted another one into the cheap seats after McConnell got the expected NRA endorsement. She promptly tweeted a renewal of her months-old challenge to the senate minority leader to meet her on a gun range.

Mum is still the word from McConnell and Team Mitch about the shooting match.

Meanwhile, Grimes and Team Switch have nicknamed the McConnell campaign “Team Glitch.”

A lot of Democrats said all along Grimes was the candidate to ditch Mitch. Time will tell. But right now she’s proving to be a tough out.



Berry Craig