FRANKFORT, Ky. — Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway announced Thursday in a 7-minute video that he will enter the race for Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning's seat.
"Now my friends is the time to take back Wendell Ford's seat and return it to the people for whom he fought," Conway said in the video, referring to the well-known Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate from 1974 to 1999.
Conway will face fellow Democrat Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo in the primary. Gov. Steve Beshear already has endorsed Mongiardo.
Conway, a Louisville lawyer and first-term Kentucky Attorney General, has been mulling entering the 2010 race for months. Conway, State Auditor Crit Luallen and U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Versailles, were all possible contenders to take on Mongiardo.
In the video, Conway touts his accomplishments since becoming attorney general in November 2007 before pledging to work in Washington to break up the large financial institutions that have been bailed out by the federal government “to encourage innovation and competition and to avoid a repeat of companies growing too big to fail.”
A recent poll showed Conway and Mongiardo, a Hazard doctor and former state senator, would fare about the same in a race against Bunning.
Bunning lags behind potential Democratic challengers in the 2010 Senate race, while just 28 percent of Kentucky voters who responded in a new poll like the job the two-term senator is doing.
Read more at Kentucky.com