The Best of Times . . .

Fresh off his landslide reelection last year, Mitch McConnell is majority leader and getting rave reviews for making the Senate function again. The state’s junior senator, Rand Paul, has a national following and is a credible candidate for president. No state can boast a more influential pair of senators.

Representative Hal Rogers from rural and relatively poor eastern Kentucky is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, a plum post, albeit less powerful than it used to be. Republicans hold four of the state’s five other congressional seats.

Kentucky has not elected a Democratic senator since 1992 and has not gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1996. But it’s not as dependably red in state elections.

In this year’s gubernatorial race, though, a recent survey by a Democratic-leaning pollster put Republican Matt Bevin ahead of Democratic state attorney general Jack Conway, whom Paul trounced in the 2010 Senate fight. Republicans lead Democrats down the entire slate of constitutional offices, a situation never before seen in a state that has elected only one GOP governor since 1967.

Republicans enjoy a secure majority in the state senate and are within striking distance of finally capturing the state house of representatives. McConnell calls that a top priority on his political “bucket list” for next year.

The GOP is rapidly gaining ground on the long-dominant Democrats in voter registration. The ratio of 1.35 Democrats to every Republican is the lowest in memory and shrinks with each new report.

So Bluegrass State Republicans should be celebrating, right? As ESPN commentator and former football coach of McConnell’s beloved University of Louisville Cardinals Lee Corso might say, “Not so fast, my friend!”

McConnell’s tenure atop the Senate is tenuous. Republicans must defend 24 Senate seats in 2016, while Democrats have only 10 on the line. Almost a third of those Republican seats are in states President Obama won twice. If Democrats win five of them, they recapture the majority. 

Paul’s determination to seek reelection to the Senate while running for president increases that risk. A Kentucky statute forbids candidates from being on the ballot for two offices. Instead of challenging that law in court, perhaps as an unconstitutional imposition of an additional qualification for federal office, Paul seems to have convinced Kentucky’s Republican apparatus to hold a presidential caucus instead of a primary. He promises to foot the bill for it, too.

This gambit, in which McConnell has apparently acquiesced, could generate a lawsuit, maybe by Democratic secretary of state Allison Lundergan Grimes. She desperately needs something to stay relevant after McConnell trounced her in the Senate race last year despite seemingly daily campaign appearances on her behalf by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Kentucky law also strictly limits substitutions after the filing deadline, so the GOP may not be able to name a new Senate candidate in the admittedly unlikely event Paul becomes the party’s presidential standard-bearer. Politico put it this way: “The worst-case scenario could mean either that Paul would have to forfeit Kentucky’s eight electoral votes to a Democratic presidential candidate or abandon the Senate seat and leave his party without a candidate in next year’s general election.”

Paul’s camp argues the party could name a replacement. Nobody knows how this scenario will play out, and there is plenty of grumbling about it.

The prudent course would see a friendly alternative run, someone who promises to throw his or her support to Paul if his presidential hopes have petered out by the May Senate primary. McConnell publicly professes support for Paul’s presidential campaign, but they fought ferociously during the debate on renewal of the Patriot Act. Given some of Paul’s positions, particularly on national security issues like that one, pro-defense Kentucky Republicans might conclude he should have a primary opponent on policy as well as political grounds. That is unlikely, but without someone else on that ballot, Paul’s dual ambitions put Republicans in Kentucky and the country in a needlessly precarious position. Popular and effective state auditor Adam Edelen is likely to be the Democratic foe in the general.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party darling McConnell mercilessly mauled in last year’s Senate primary is the GOP gubernatorial nominee. Bevin won by 83 votes when the two most formidable of his three opponents—state agriculture commissioner James Comer and former Louisville councilman Hal Heiner—turned their fire on each other over allegations Comer had physically assaulted and facilitated an abortion for a college girlfriend. Rumors had circulated from the beginning, but made their way into the mainstream media late in the race. One newspaper connected Heiner’s campaign to a blogger who had been peddling the assault story.

While Comer and Heiner both suffered from the last-minute revelations (which they denied), the glib Bevin ran an ad portraying them in a food fight, with himself the adult in the room, and impressed audiences on the fried (not rubber) chicken circuit. His razor-thin margin of victory was anything but a mandate, however. Only 17 percent of the state’s 1.24 million registered Republicans bothered to vote.

Conway, an affluent personal injury lawyer and serial candidate, easily claimed the Democratic nomination. The walkover meant Conway could husband his resources, but the unusual lack of competition for what was once his party’s most coveted prize speaks volumes about the state of state Democrats.

The charisma-challenged Conway, who comes off as a poor man’s Al Gore, offers no real policy agenda. He does, however, have the benefit of McConnell’s proven playbook from last year’s Republican primary. McConnell blasted Bevin for backing and taking government bailouts, exaggerating his résumé, and attending a pro-cockfighting rally. After the Republican Governors Association aired an ad linking Conway to Obama, the Democrat retaliated by bashing Bevin for “scandals—like his refusal to release his tax returns, his possible ethics violation (for not disclosing ownership stakes in certain entities), and his failure to pay his taxes.” Conway desperately seeks to distance himself from Obama, who is wildly unpopular in Kentucky, by saying he voted for him but also sued him (by joining in some anti-EPA, pro-coal suits).

Bevin will need and probably get significant help from the RGA and other outside groups. Kentucky’s contest is the most interesting of only three gubernatorial races this year. He has poured millions of his own fortune into consecutive primaries but despite endorsements from some prominent, provocative radio talkers has shown little ability to raise money.

Conway faces a formidable challenge in overcoming his tearful refusal to appeal a federal court ruling overturning socially conservative Kentucky’s pre-Obergefell legal regime that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. But he was slow to join Republicans’ post-Charleston call to move a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, a Kentucky native, from the state capitol rotunda to the state history museum, saying he would “have to chew on that one a little bit.”

Bevin’s impressive running mate, Jenean Hampton, would be the first African-American female elected statewide in Kentucky. Some Republicans quietly fear, however, that her presence on the ticket could hurt in parts of the state where some voters want to keep Davis in the capitol and still proudly wave the Confederate flag.

Kentucky’s public pensions are the nation’s worst-funded. Bevin holds himself out as perhaps the state’s premier pension expert, but a recent gaffe raised the kind of doubts that worry even the most ardent GOP loyalists. A state retiree asked him, “Will you commit to putting the full ARC in your budget?” ARC is the “actuarially required contribution” or “annual required contribution,” a basic term referring to the amount the employer must contribute to cover benefit costs. Virtually every news report on pensions defines ARC. Kentucky’s bipartisan failure to make the ARC in recent years is a big reason state pensions are in such dire straits.

In trying to process the question, the supremely confident Bevin suddenly looked like a dog hearing a strange sound. He cocked his head and cluelessly asked, “Now, the full ARC?” It was clear he had no idea what the questioner was talking about. 

Despite unsettling displays like that one, McConnell has endorsed and publicly spoken up for Bevin, who did not do the same for him after their brutal primary. Their relationship remains unclear, however, and Republicans are keenly seeking signals of just how much the state’s GOP godfather will do this year for a guy who tried to kneecap him last year. As he has shown by his subsequent good relations with Paul, whom he opposed in the 2010 Senate primary, McConnell is the consummate political professional and perfectly capable of a rapprochement. Yet some still have a hard time believing he would relish having a former foe as governor and a rival power center in the state party.

John David Dyche is an attorney and political columnist in Louisville, Kentucky, and the author of Republican Leader: A Political Biography of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.