Progressive group calls for McConnell challengers

By Alexandra Jaffe - 01/09/13 10:06 AM ET

A progressive group, frustrated with the lack of development in the Kentucky Senate race, has launched a number of petitions urging a candidate to come forward to challenge Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Though the group, Progress Kentucky, is liberal, it's calling for any candidate — from the right or the left — to challenge the senator.

The petitions circulating read, "We strongly urge ________________ to challenge Mitch McConnell for Kentucky's U.S. Senate seat in 2014.” On its website, Progress Kentucky lists 22 possible challengers, 11 from the right (including a handful of Tea Party candidates and a libertarian candidate), 10 from the left and one Independent.

The petitions are issued through SignOn.org, the petition arm of MoveOn.org, and each only calls for 50 signatures. The petition calling for actress Ashley Judd to run currently has 11 signatures (including one from Progress Kentucky), the most of any other petition.

Progress Kentucky's other candidates include, among others, Reps. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the latter of whom is backed by the Tea Party; Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan-Grimes (D); and former gubernatorial candidate Phil Moffett, also a Tea Party candidate.

In a statement accompanying the petitions, Shawn Reilly, executive director of Progress Kentucky, echoes what a number of Democrats in the state believe: "It’s unacceptable that someone as unpopular as McConnell would be unopposed for a sixth term."

McConnell was revealed to be the nation's least popular senator in a poll released last month by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, and though he led a number of Democratic challengers, Judd took 43 percent support to his 47, indicating he might be vulnerable.

Polls released prior to that one, however, indicated the senator is much safer, and he has won four of his five elections with more than 50 percent of the vote and has nearly $7 million in his war chest, a considerable sum for any challenger to surmount.