Tagged: Progress Kentucky

In a new op-ed piece, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell finally addresses a liberal super PAC accused of recording of his campaign office.

McConnell has personally avoided talking about Progress Kentucky directly, but his re-election campaign and surrogates have focused on the groups in TV ads and news releases. 

Some observers have said the issue at hand isn't how the secret recording of the McConnell campaign was obtained, but aides talking about Ashley Judd's struggles with depression as a part of opposition research.

The GOP leader takes time to respond to newspaper columnist Merlene Davis, who wrote McConnell owed Judd an apology for strategizing on how to attack the Hollywood actresses's past mental health problems but not before taking a swipe at the "partisan zealots" at Progress.

From The Lexington Herald-Leader:

Shortly after the FBI began investigating a criminal recording at my campaign headquarters, Davis penned an opinion column here echoing the framework of the left-wing journalist who obtained the illegally recorded audio in the first place.

The campaign to re-elect Republican Senator Mitch McConnell launched a new TV ad Thursday, which continues to pummel liberal super PAC Progress Kentucky and other groups for their attacks.

Asking "how dirty" will Democrats get, the narrator says McConnell is President Obama's number one target while highlighting the FBI investigation into a secret recording of a McConnell campaign strategy meeting.  WFPL broke the story that a local Democratic official alleged two activists involved with Progress were behind the recording.

The ad also digs at Americans United for Change, which launched a commercial which said McConnell's position against gun background checks put him in agreement with the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

"The far left is desperate to hurt Senator McConnell and have resorted to some of the dirtiest tactics in memory," McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a release. "Whether it be the left's racist attacks, their spying and illegal recording of our office meetings or comparing Mitch to mass-murderers and Al Qaeda terrorists, Kentuckians are appalled and will not stand for it."

Watch:

Governor Steve Beshear is criticizing the secret recording of a campaign meeting of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell  that was leaked. 

Two members of Progress Kentucky, Shawn Reilly and Curt Morrison, have been implicated by a Jefferson County Democratic official as being behind who secretly recorded the McConnell meeting.

The Mother Jones reporter who uncovered a secret recording of Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s campaign meeting discussing ways to attack actress Ashley Judd's mental health says a Kentucky Democrat urged him not to write the story.

Journalist David Corn is Washington Bureau Chief for the magazine and appeared on the Diane Rehm Show Monday morning to discuss how he obtained the tape and its contents. He is also the reporter was broke the infamous "47 percent" tape of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Corn says before the original April 9 story about the recordings came out a Kentucky source who "caught wind" of the report discouraged him from writing it and warned the audio would ultimately benefit McConnell.

"There was a person in Kentucky who was sympathetic to the Democrats—let me put it that way—I can’t identify the person. But who got wind that I was going to do the story and contacted me and asked me not to. Why? Because this person wisely predicted that McConnell would come out and make himself the victim and it would help McConnell," he says.