U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao greet a crowd of campaign supporters after defeating Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin in the state Republican primary elections in May.JOHN SOMMERS II/Reuters
Before long, the candidates fighting for a Senate seat in Kentucky will have raised enough money to donate a dollar to every Canadian alive.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's 35-year-old Secretary of State, are waging the most closely watched political contest in the country. The money – $34-million (U.S.) and counting – reflects the stakes.
The McConnell campaign says the attention is unwarranted: If its man was just another senator, rather than the potential Senate majority leader, no one would be paying attention. Kentucky is a conservative place and its citizens dislike an already unpopular president. The Republican can't lose.
Virtually every professional and amateur election forecaster predicts Mr. McConnell will win in November. The Washington Post's forecasting model puts the probability at 97 per cent. Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia who maintains an election forecasting model, both say Kentucky "likely" will be a win for Republicans.
But the air of inevitability surrounding Mr. McConnell feels wrong.
He's certainly the favourite – an incumbent almost always is. Yet the heavy odds in his favour discount the Alice in Wonderland element of this election cycle; the laws of electoral physics have been routinely suspended. In Mississippi, incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran was supposed to lose because he failed to avoid a runoff with a Tea Party challenger. Voter turnout drops for runoffs, favouring the candidate with the most zealous followers. Yet turnout increased and Mr. Cochran won.
Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the Cook Political Report, a widely read newsletter, lowered Mr. McConnell's odds at the end of June, calling the race a "toss up."
The notion than Mr. McConnell can't lose doesn't make sense, Ms. Duffy said in an interview this week. His approval ratings are weak and polls consistently show that he and Mr. Grimes are tied. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's stunning primary loss crystallized the danger of incumbency in this election cycle. U.S. voters are extremely angry at Washington and they are choosing to vent in unpredictable ways. Mr. McConnell is the embodiment of Washington.
Lacking charisma, he became an institution in his state by delivering federal largesse to one of the poorer regions of the country. Dewey Clayton, a political science professor at the University of Louisville, says Mr. McConnell would deploy specific campaign ads for each region of Kentucky, highlighting the federal spending he had arranged in each one. That approach doesn't work any more because the fiscal purists in the Tea Party disapprove of that kind of thing.
"He's sweating more than he has in 20 years," Prof. Clayton said. "Grimes is young, a fresh face. She has good ideas. She is running an aggressive campaign. And she's raising enough money to be competitive."
Ms. Grimes has responded effectively to all attacks. When Mr. Obama last month announced new limits on carbon emissions, Ms. Grimes quickly criticized the White House's "war on coal," undermining Mr. McConnell's efforts to characterize her as a puppet of Democratic leaders in Washington. After Mr. McConnell – posed awkwardly with a rifle at a convention of conservative voters outside Washington in March, Ms. Grimes's campaign circulated a photo of the Democratic candidate engaging in target practice in the backyard.
Kentucky has a Democratic governor, so the party isn't exactly lost in the wilderness. But national elections have been tough on Kentucky liberals in recent times. The state's second senator is Rand Paul, the Tea Party favourite and potential presidential candidate in 2016. "There is always interest" in the national races, said Attica Scott, a Democratic city councillor from Louisville. "This time is different. There is a belief that we can do it this time."
Ms. Grimes's campaign echoes the strategy President Barack Obama used in 2012 to win swing states such as Virginia. Special targets are women, blacks and students, groups Ms. Grimes is attempting to lure by advocating equal pay, a higher minimum wage and alleviating student debt. Ms. Grimes has hit the road in rural Kentucky to blunt Mr. McConnell's attempt to characterize her as Democratic debutante.
The Democratic strategy in Kentucky is not without weaknesses.
Party elders chased off Ashley Judd, the actress who had expressed interest in challenging Mr. McConnell, because they feared her views were too liberal to win a state-wide election. This angered some in the Democratic base who feel Ms. Grimes was elevated without having to prove she deserved the nomination, said Sarah Lynn Cunningham, a community and environmental activist in Louisville. "I will vote for her, but I won't feel very good about it," Ms. Cunningham said in a telephone interview.
Ms. Cunningham also sees Ms. Grimes's criticism of Mr. Obama's environmental policy, including his handling of the Keystone XL Pipeline, as disingenuous and unseemly. While commending Ms. Grimes for "listening," Ms. Scott conceded there is Democratic grumbling about their candidate's lack of conviction on some issues, including coal.
Ms. Grimes will need to get out her vote on Election Day to win. If she does, she would upset the Republican Party's path to a majority in the Senate, which relies on its incumbents winning. That could be enough to engage the base. "I think she can win," Ms. Cunningham said.
Editor's note: Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes have spent $34-million on their Senate races in Kentucky. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the amount as $34-billion.