Democrats working on Booker visit | News

Larry Miller, chairman of the county party, said his group has invited Booker to attend the Aug. 20 grand opening of the Daviess County Democratic Party headquarters at Williamsburg Square.

“We have invited the him, and we’re working on that right now,” Miller said. “We expect him to be here.”

Booker’s campaign did not respond to a phone call and email seeking to confirm his potential Owensboro visit.

The Democratic candidate’s lone visit to Owensboro was in July 2021, days after he announced his candidacy.

Even though Daviess County has voted Republican in recent elections — Republican Mitch McConnell won 57.8% of the votes over Democratic candidate Amy McGrath’s 38.2% in 2020, while Paul carried the county with 57% of the vote over Jim Gray’s 41.3% in 2016 — Booker said last July that he’s the man to unseat Paul, whose last visit to Owensboro was in March.

“I’ll help you get rid of Rand Paul,” Booker told a packed room at the Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn.

Recently, Booker and Paul have been trading barbs in the wake of the flooding damage in eastern Kentucky.

After Booker delivered a truck full of supplies to an emergency shelter in Whitesburg on July 30, Paul knocked the move as a publicity stunt.

“I think most people think that the people who should be doing the responding are the professionals,” Paul said at a press conference last Monday, according to the Louisville Courier Journal. “You know, politicians out there having their picture taken probably isn’t that useful.”

Booker fired back with numerous Tweets denouncing Paul, including one Thursday accusing the Kentucky senator of being a Russian asset.

“If only Rand Paul worked as hard for Kentucky as he does for Vladimir Putin,” Booker said on Twitter.

A January poll from Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy shows that Paul has a commanding lead over Booker (55% to 39%), while the Associated Press reported last month that Paul raised $3.1 million in the three-month period through June to Booker’s $1.3 million.