Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes who will be facing off against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in November will also be locking horns with President Obama. Grimes said in a press release Monday that “President Obama’s new EPA rule is more proof that Washington isn’t working for Kentucky.”
Grimes, whose family has a long history of producing Kentucky Democratic politicians (her father Jerry was a former legislator and at one time the chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party), believes that the EPA’s regulations on the coal industry are far too restrictive and fail to appreciate that coal is the state’s life blood. “Coal keeps the lights on in the Commonwealth, providing a way for thousands of Kentuckians to put food on their table,” she insists.
The senatorial hopeful insists that when she becomes a senator she will “fiercely oppose the President’s attack on Kentucky’s coal industry because protecting jobs will be my number one priority.”
According to Kentucky.com, she has been using the issue to create distance from the unpopular president from the same party for his staunch advocacy for the “war on coal.” Obama is on the record for wanting to bankrupt the coal business to protect the nation from climate change. “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them. Under my plan, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama said in 2008.
According to CNN Politics, Grimes should be able to put money where her mouth is because she has already raised $8 million in a race that may reach $100 million in spending.