Conway Wins Fancy Farm; Bevin Disses Whole Event
It's hard to imagine a deeper insult to Kentucky's oldest and most revered political event than a candidate for U.S. Senate refusing to attend as AynRandy did, but Matt Bevin managed to top it.
Sam Youngman at the Herald:
The annual political picnic here has long been a partisan battle of wits and one-liners, where the politicians trade barbs and laughs and the crowd eggs them on.Now that, my friends, is chutzpah. Bevin, running on the repug ticketm, representing the party suffering from what Charlie Pierce calls a prion disease, and having run one of the dirtiest primary campaigns in state history against Mitch McConnell last year, pleading for bipartisan unity. At Fancy Farm.
But apparently nobody told Matt Bevin, the Republican candidate for governor in the November election.
On Saturday, while Democrats, including gubernatorial nominee and attorney general Jack Conway, used their time on stage to remind voters of Bevin's rocky past as a politician, Bevin took the stage to decry the nature of the event and call for unity.
In a sharp departure from the theme of the picnic, Bevin said he was glad to be at the event, which primarily serves as a fundraiser for St. Jerome's Parrish, but said that the people there "literally are celebrating the very worst elements of the political process."
Matt Jones, host of Kentucky Sports Radio and the emcee of the event, approached the lectern after Bevin finished, noting how unusual the speech was.For you non-roundball fans out there, that would be suicide.
"Matt I've got to give you credit, that was a strong speech, coming to Fancy Farm and saying you don't like Fancy Farm," Jones said. "It's like me going to Rupp Arena and saying Rick Pitino is a better coach than Calipari."
But Conway was on-message, reminding voters that McConnell's campaign last year called Bevin an "East Coast con man" and a "pathological liar," noting the size of the crowd and saying, "normally he's got to go to a cockfighting rally to get a crowd this big."And that's exactly how it happened last year: Alison Lundergan Grimes gave a great Fancy Farm performance, as Youngman puts it , "on the way to a 16-point loss."
Conway said that Bevin "lies to us about the big things and the small things (and) we can't trust Matt Bevin to look out for us."
Conway and the Democrats that followed talked about Bevin's New Hampshire upbringing, his history of tax liens and his attendance at a pro-cockfighting rally.
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