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Grimes Takes Aim At McConnell Hearing Absences in New Ad

“He only showed up seven percent of the time,” a narrator says of McConnell’s attendance to agriculture panel meetings.
Image: Democrat Alison Grimes Campaigns Ahead Of Kentucky Primary
U.S. Senate candidate and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-KY) greets supporters in her newly opened campaign headquarters on May 19, 2014 in Louisville, Kentucky.Win McNamee / Getty Images

Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes is up with a new ad criticizing GOP opponent Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, for skipping out on hearings by the Senate’s agriculture and appropriations panels.

“He only showed up seven percent of the time,” a narrator says of the party leader's attendance to hearings and markups on committees, including those of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.

“Those committees are important to Kentucky,” the narrator says, adding, “If you did that, you’d get fired. So should he.”

McConnell laughed off a similar line of attack Grimes made at a forum last month, saying that his role as Republicans’ top Senate strategist and leader understandably trumps committee assignments.

“Alison’s friend and supporter Harry Reid must not have told her how party leaders deal with committees' work,” McConnell said.

“Harry actually resigned from all of his committees because you don’t have time,” he added. “Because you don’t have time to do justice to committee work if you’re one of the party leaders, you’re involved in other issues, honestly, much more consequential issues than being there for particular hearings on a subject that may or may not be relevant to what’s going on.”

A Grimes official said the ad is a six-figure buy and will run statewide “over the coming weeks.”

- Carrie Dann