KY-06: On Tuesday, retired Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, beat Lexington Mayor Jim Gray 49-41 in the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Andy Barr. While late polling show McGrath in a position to pull off the win, her victory was still a monumental upset against an opponent who began the race with widespread name recognition and had been recruited into the race by the DCCC even after McGrath had spent months on the campaign trail.
But the D-Trip had no problems switching horses on primary night: The National Journal recently reported that the committee had established a much better relationship with their newly minted nominee over the last few months, and as soon as McGrath had won, the DCCC rolled out a poll conducted by their in-house analytics team that gave her a huge 52-37 lead over Barr, even though Donald Trump carried this seat 55-39.
Of course, when you see a spread like that, it’s only natural to wonder if the numbers are too good to be true. The only other survey we've seen of the race was a February internal from McGrath that showed her trailing Barr 48-44. The DCCC survey, by contrast, was conducted in late April and early May—a time when both McGrath and Gray were spending heavily on ads while Barr, who had minimal opposition in his primary, was off the air. The Democratic contest stayed positive until the final weekend of the primary, so it's very possible that McGrath is doing well in the DCCC's poll in part because voters saw plenty of ads touting her without viewing any spots attacking her or promoting Barr.
That state of affairs won't hold in the general election, of course. Barr had $2.3 million in the bank as of early May, so he'll have plenty of money to get his message out, and his allies at the Congressional Leadership Fund have also reserved $1.8 million in fall TV time to defend him (the Democratic group House Majority PAC booked $564,000 in March to help the eventual Democratic nominee). And while Barr was able to stockpile cash, McGrath spent much of her war chest on her primary, so she'll need to replenish it. However, McGrath has proven to be a very strong fundraiser (she brought in $2 million through early May), so she, too, should have the resources she'll need for November.
McGrath's decisive victory over Gray is also a good reminder that, while it's certainly good to start out a primary with strong name recognition, it's very possible to overcome your opponent’s advantage if you have a strong message and the money to broadcast it far and wide. One of the reasons that we at Daily Kos Elections spend so much time looking at candidate fundraising is to get an idea about which contenders, regardless of how well-known they are and where they stand in the polls at the start of a race, have the resources to get their name and message out, and which ones don't.
McGrath is a good example of a candidate who did have the necessary resources and the compelling message to pull off this feat. While she entered the race last summer with a hard-hitting introductory video that quickly went viral and helped her raise a fortune, she still badly trailed Gray as recently as two months before the primary. McGrath's own polling in December showed her down 63-18, and a Gray poll from early March gave him a hefty 52-19 lead.
However McGrath soon went on the air with a barrage of strong ads touting her military service, including one spot recounting a harrowing mission in Iraq in which she only had enough fuel to drop a single bomb on an enemy outpost—a mission she pulled off in spite of the odds and thus saved her fellow troops. She also ran ads pledging to stand up to Trump and to protect Obamacare, while Gray's more bipartisan spots seemed geared toward a general election audience.
And while Gray would have been Kentucky's first openly gay member of Congress, McGrath’s campaign highlighted her fight to become one of the first women combat pilots, a dream she harbored from a time before such roles were open to women. McGrath was also able to argue that the mayor was part of a political establishment that she was separate from. We're likely to see her use a similar message against Barr.