In a few minutes, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes of Kentucky will meet with the editorial board of the Courier-Journal in Louisville. Campaign memos recently obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD show how Grimes and her staff prepare for these meetings, requiring the red-state Democrat to walk a delicate tightrope between the liberal sensibilities of the journalists and Kentucky’s conservative culture.
The memos, which were drafted on September 26 to prepare Grimes for today’s meeting with the Courier-Journal as well as an October 14 meeting with the Kentucky Enquirer outside Cincinnati, are addressed to the candidate and provide her with background material on local and national issues, talking points for her to use on those issues, information about the newspaper, and photos and biographies of the members of the editorial boards. The memo describes the Courier-Journal as having “a wide reach with a large, liberal audience” and mentions the possibility the paper could endorse Grimes.
