KY-Sen: After state auditor Adam Edelen, who had been linked with a possible challenge to Republican incumbent Sen. Rand Paul in 2016, surprisingly lost his re-election last November, that got treated by pundits as the end of the line for a plausible Democratic challenge to Paul. However, Lexington mayor Jim Gray started considering the race several weeks ago, and he must have liked the response he got, because on Tuesday (Kentucky’s filing deadline) he announced that he's running.
Gray is in his second term as mayor of Kentucky’s second largest city (population 310,000, and home of the University of Kentucky). Gray is also head of a family construction business; what may get a lot of attention, though (especially in the wake of the controversy over same-sex marriage at the county clerk’s office in Rowan County, Kentucky), is that Gray is openly gay.
If nothing else, Gray’s run is probably the last nail in Rand Paul’s presidential campaign, as he’ll have to pivot to trying to keep his day job. Considering that Paul’s polling has dwindled down into the low single-digits, though, it wasn’t likely he was going to be running for President much longer, regardless. But there’s now speculation that this development will take Paul out of the presidential race even before he gets to the Kentucky caucuses on March 5 (the same caucuses he was instrumental in creating).
Even with a prominent candidate like Gray in the race, it’s still an uphill fight for the Democrats, given Kentucky’s red-state status in presidential elections, and now also the trouble Democrats faced in the 2015 statewide elections. However, along with Missouri and Arkansas, it’s another lower-tier state where they have a strong candidate playing offense, in case the playing field expands after things really go haywire for the GOP in the presidential race.