Former Vice President Joe Biden is coming to Kentucky next Friday to rally for Democrat Amy McGrath in one of the nation’s most hotly-contested races for control of the U.S. House.
Biden and McGrath, who is challenging Rep. Andy Barr, R-Kentucky, will hold a community fish fry and rally Friday at Bath County High School in Owingsville, giving McGrath’s campaign a considerable boost from the vice president, who is traveling the country to campaign for candidates in competitive races.
Biden, who called McGrath shortly after her come-from-behind primary victory in May to congratulate her, said he was looking forward to campaigning with her.
“Amy McGrath has dedicated her life to service to this country,” Biden said. “We need more men and women of character like Amy in Congress.”
McGrath, whose focus during the primary on the district’s rural communities was said to have impressed Biden, said she was “honored” that Biden would have a chance to meet “the hardworking people from our rural counties.
“The Vice President is an American patriot who has dedicated his life to serving our country and bettering the lives of all Americans,” she said. “We are holding a community fish fry in his honor and all are welcome. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican or an Independent, we hope you will join us and celebrate one of our country’s most well-loved and respected citizen leaders.”
Shortly after Biden’s visit was made public, the Barr campaign announced that President Donald Trump would campaign with Barr in Richmond next week.
The visits comes as both parties step up their campaigns for the seat, which could help decide control of the House. Democrats are hoping that a “blue wave” could usher McGrath and other Democrats into Republican-held seats. Barr and his allies have hammered McGrath, running a barrage of ads that look to portray her as “too liberal for Kentucky.”
“It’s no surprise that Joe Biden is coming to the district to campaign for Amy McGrath, because we all know she voted for President Obama twice and wants to take us back to his destructive economic policies, his war on coal and the slowest, weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression,” Jodi Whitaker, communications director for Barr’s campaign, said in a statement Friday.
McGrath has largely declined to launch negative broadsides of her own, instead releasing ads that poke fun at the attack ads.
The independent Cook Political Report last week suggested that Barr had erased a deficit with McGrath thanks to the ads, but her campaign contends that her above the fray approach is working.
An internal campaign poll released Thursday shows her with a 7 point lead over Barr and the campaign says it shows McGrath is “strongly rebounding” from the more than $2 million in attack ads that Barr and the House Speaker Paul Ryan-affiliated Congressional Leadership Fund have launched.
McGrath also announced this week that she collected $3.65 million from July through September, one of several House Democratic candidates raising record-setting amounts of money that is making Republicans nervous.
The fish fry and rally comes as Biden had surprised McGrath with a telephone call two days after she clinched a come-from behind bid to become the Democratic challenger.
At the time, Biden said he was impressed with how the retired fighter pilot performed in the rural counties outside Lexington and said that other Democrats should be working to connect with rural voters.
Democrats have grappled with strategies to reach rural voters since Donald Trump in 2016 used his appeal in a number of swing states to edge out Hillary Clinton for the presidency. McGrath, who was not the choice of national Democrats, kept her distance from the national Democratic party throughout the primary, pitching herself as an outsider who would represent all 19 counties in the district, not just Lexington.
It paid off: While her primary rival Lexington Mayor Jim Gray won Fayette County, the largest in the district, McGrath took the remaining counties.
Biden is viewed as a strong surrogate for Democrats and someone who can appeal to the working-class swing voters who sided with Trump in 2016. He’s laid out an aggressive campaign schedule that is taking him into purple states and areas where Democrats lost to Trump. He’s scheduled next week to also campaign with Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, who is locked in close race.
Biden’s stepped-up campaign activity has caught the attention of President Donald Trump, as Biden mulls a potential 2020 challenge to Trump.
Trump laced into Biden at a recent rally in Tennessee, dubbing him “One Percent Biden,” as he mocked the former Delaware senator’s failure to gain much traction in his campaigns for the presidency.
Lesley Clark: 202-383-6054, @lesleyclark