M. David Nichols
Gray concedes
As the Commonwealth goes, so goes the nation.
Mirroring and in some ways forecasting the GOP sweep of federal power, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray’s underdog bid to unseat first-term Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul ended in defeat Tuesday night for the popular 62-year-old Democrat.
“I decided to begin this campaign because, like they say in the Broadway show ‘Hamilton’: It was my time to take my shot. And I took it,” Gray told a crowd of supporters and media gathered Tuesday evening at Manchester Music Hall. “And even though the results aren’t what we’d hoped, I am so glad I took that shot. I want to congratulate Sen. Paul on his re-election.”
Paul, a 53-year-old Bowling Green-based ophthalmologist, enjoyed both the advantages of incumbency as well as the GOP’s increasingly solid hold on statewide offices.
The race never seemed closer than when Gray launched his bid in January. It gained national attention as it pitted the executive of the largest Southern city with an openly gay mayor against a Tea Party favorite and prominent leader of the Republican Party’s more libertarian wing. Adding to the interest, Paul was still deeply engaged in his ultimately failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination in a packed crowd of contenders that eventually fell to the party’s divisive pick, New York real estate magnate, reality show star and now President-elect Donald Trump.
Like every other race and issue on the ballot in what was among the stranger and more contentious campaign seasons in modern memory, the Paul-Gray race faded as the tumultuous presidential contest sucked up all the oxygen. “Nobody wanted to stop watching the presidential circus long enough to focus on down-ballot races, which made it impossible for Gray to gain much traction,” said D. Stephen Voss, associate professor of the University of Kentucky’s Department of Political Science. “It was an uphill battle, if not an impossible one, but it allowed Gray to bring his name to the attention of a lot of voters outside of Lexington.”
Gray consistently pressed the case that Paul’s interests and attention were on his own greater ambitions and not on serving the people of Kentucky. Polls that showed a narrow race into summer quickly widened once Paul dropped out of the GOP presidential nomination hunt.
As he has throughout his political career, Gray championed his private-sector experience helping to grow his family’s design and building company, Gray Construction, into a global success.
“I’m a businessman who just happens to be mayor,” he told Business Lexington earlier this year. “I’m the only candidate that has real experience in creating jobs and diversifying an economy.”
For his part, Paul seemed content to ride on his reputation as a foe of federal authority in general and, more specifically, of the initiatives of President Barack Obama, who remains deeply unpopular in the state. At the same time, Paul enjoys something of an outsider status within his own party for unconventional stands on privacy issues and military engagements.
“I’m a distinct voice in the Republican Party and will continue to be so,” Paul said earlier this year.
Despite Gray’s popularity, especially in urban areas such as Lexington and Louisville, he faced a tide of statewide sentiment moving in the opposite direction and a state Democratic Party adrift after losing the governor’s mansion last year to Matt Bevin and now its last statewide bastion of power as Republicans also won control of the state House on Tuesday.
If the future of a state Democratic Party deep in the political wilderness seems uncertain, the Republican Party in the Commonwealth faces its own existential questions after 2016.
“The framing of recent elections has pushed a majority of Kentucky voters to the right,” Voss noted. “Both major parties underwent insurgencies this year, with [Vermont Sen. Bernie]
Sanders invading the Democratic Party and Trump hijacking the GOP. What it means to be a Democrat or what it means to be a Republican could be changing dramatically in the next few years, as Democrats maneuver for influence and Republicans jockey to redefine their party. The aftermath of that struggle might redefine partisan politics in a way that makes Kentucky competitive again.”