Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasted no time after his primary win, immediately inviting Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, his newly-minted Democratic opponent, to a series of debates.
The Kentucky Herald-Leader reported Wednesday that after McConnell beat tea party-backed businessman Matt Bevin Tuesday, he sent a letter to Grimes challenging her to three "Lincoln-Douglas" style debates.
“In order to present our views fairly and without interpretation by traditional media filters, I believe we should participate in three traditional Lincoln-Douglas style debates moderated only by a single timekeeper/moderator,” McConnell's letter read, according to the paper. “By conducting these debates without an audience, without props and without notes, it will allow for an unvarnished exchange of views for Kentuckians to evaluate.”
McConnell even suggested a timeline for the debates.
“I believe that in order to present our views before Kentuckians are inundated with advertising, we should agree to hold the first of these three debates before the Fourth of July,” the senator wrote. “This will allow for our first real exchange of ideas a full calendar year after you announced your candidacy.”
Grimes seemed open to debating McConnell during an interview Monday.
“When it comes to debating, it probably will be Mitch McConnell that will be the ‘empty dress’ and won’t show up on the other side,” she said, referring to a derogatory comment made about her made in September by a National Republican Senatorial Committee staffer and former McConnell aide.
Grimes, for her part, echoed McConnell's quick-out-of-the-gate campaign move by releasing a new television ad Wednesday in which she rejects McConnell's claims that she'd act as a rubber stamp for President Barack Obama's agenda.
HuffPost Pollster, which combines all publicly available polling data, shows McConnell and Grimes in a dead heat.
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