WASHINGTON — Charles Booker still says he’s going to defeat Rand Paul and deliver “the shocker of the 2022 election cycle.”
It’s just hard to find Democrats who echo his prediction or much evidence that it should be taken seriously.
Now under a week until Election Day, Booker has not amassed the money necessary for television advertising. He’s not attracted the attention of national Democrats, whose focus has been trained in battlegrounds from Pennsylvania to Nevada. And he’s not even been able to draw Paul into a substantive fight over the issues, with the two-term incumbent Republican avoiding a debate.
After several cycles of commonwealth Senate races in which Kentucky Democrats got their hopes up only to be let down hard when the results poured in, this year the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky has almost become an afterthought.
“I’ve not seen a single TV ad for Booker,” said Kim Geveden, a Somerset-based Democratic communications consultant. “I’ve not heard one Democrat mention that race in weeks.”
Two years ago, Amy McGrath leveraged national hype to raise $94 million against Mitch McConnell, only to lose by 20 points. This year, Booker has struggled to build a war chest against Paul, collecting just $6 million for his entire campaign.
The question among political insiders isn’t really if Paul will win, it’s how much his margin will be. Booker has argued that running as a fearless progressive will attract more disengaged Kentuckians and inspire higher participation.
Whether he performs better than McGrath will test his theory that swerving left is more politically effective than playing to the middle.
“I am expecting a Rand Paul win,” said Collin Morris, a Democratic communications consultant.
“My hope is that Booker puts up Jim Gray numbers and we see a window where Democrats can home in and weaponize progressive messaging for the future.”
In Paul’s last reelection race in 2016, Gray, the former Lexington mayor, captured 43%, which still amounted to a nearly 15-point defeat.
“Charles is testing that end of the spectrum that hasn’t been tested yet,” Morris said. “It’s a building block to see where Democrats are at and what they need to do going forward.”
Booker, the first Black Kentuckian to become a major party nominee for U.S. Senate, has been openly frustrated with what he sees as a lack of investment in his campaign both locally and nationally. Over the summer he became so discouraged that he contemplated abandoning the Democratic Party altogether and branding himself as an independent, only to be talked out of the idea by Democratic officials. Booker denied he was ever seriously considering leaving the party.
“What is true is I’ve expressed real frustrations with the Democratic Party and party politics because a lot of communities have been ignored,” Booker said in a recent interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader. “I am frustrated that nationally the establishment, the establishment in the Democratic Party, have not seen fit to invest in the commonwealth of Kentucky.”
Booker’s platform has been built around a “New Deal” for Kentucky that embraces the Bernie Sanders-backed "Medicare for All" plan, an expansion of Social Security benefits and universal background checks for gun purchases.
In the Herald-Leader interview, Booker said the Biden’s administration’s initial $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — which some economists now argue contributed to inflation — “was not enough.”
“What we cannot do is sit back and say that more is not needed,” Booker said of such investments. “Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the country and it’s not because we’re morally deficient or lazy. It is from policy decisions and exploitation, and we need to make investments to right that.”
Paul opposed not only the American Rescue Plan but also voted against the infrastructure package backed by McConnell. Paul’s campaign did not make him available for an interview.
But there’s little evidence to show that Paul’s blanket opposition to most federal spending has hurt him with Kentuckians.
There’s only been a single public poll of the Senate race all year. When Mason-Dixon surveyed 625 registered voters back in January, Paul led Booker 55% to 39%.
“Rand Paul doesn’t do anything that’s relevant locally in Kentucky,” said Beau Weston, the local Democratic chairman in Boyle County. “I do face the reality that Kentucky has been trending red pretty strongly. … I think tribal voting will carry the Republicans.”
GOP Rep. James Comer said he’s confidant Paul would secure a double-digit victory.
“The Democrat Party in Kentucky is wounded and in disarray, no question about it,” Comer said. “I like Booker personally, I think he’s run a good campaign. I think he’s done as well as any Democrat could possibly do. The national Democrats have tarnished the Democrat Party in Kentucky. Outside of Louisville and Lexington, there just aren’t very many people in Kentucky that far to the left.”
Having raised four times the amount of money that Booker has, Paul has been able to air 11 television advertisements. Two recent spots feature Paul’s opposition to the “defund the police” position with one including a clip of Booker on MSNBC saying, “I think now is the time that we need to actually do that work.”
Paul has also spent much of his campaign promising to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his coronavirus pandemic directives if Republicans retake the Senate. Paul would likely chair a health committee that would give him oversight power to probe Fauci’s tenure, even though Biden’s chief medical adviser is planning to retire in December.
But preventing Paul from attaining such power will largely be left to Democratic candidates far from Kentucky, who remain in margin-of-error races as the 2022 campaign careens to a close.
Some Democrats believe if Booker can even come within single digits of Paul, it would be an accomplishment in itself.
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