He doesn’t have a chance now.
Beforehand, he did. His chance was a low McConnell turnout.
But, he really lost this race at the beginning when McConnell had months of money to define Bevin.
It’s a good lesson, though. Challengers to established politicians need to begin with money spending big to define themselves and bash their opponents.
I don’t think the cock fighting rally was nearly as important as the initial ‘bailout bevin’ campaign that mitch ran.
Bevin should put all his new name recognition and money spent to work and run for a congressional seat.
Democrats learned the lesson about the importance of early money a long time ago, and really proved it with applying the lesson to nominating and electing women candidates.
The term they use for it is EMILY: Early Money Is Like Yeast, and the organization that raises and funnels $$$ to women Dem candidates is called EMILY’s List.
But money wasn’t Bevins’ only problem: he’s stumbled badly in responding to three controversies that hit his campaign: his signature on those bailout documents, the claim on his website that he’d gone to MIT and the cockfighting thing.
The actual issues with those three things were secondary; the big problem was how he and his campaign handled all three in a completely amateurish manner.
He should have been prepped ton respond to the bailout stuff (first rule of running a political campaign is to oppo yourself and prep responses to possible lines of attack) and should never have shot himself in the foot with the other two.
Truth is that Bevins was a lousy candidate, not ready to run for a Senate seat and would have been eaten alive by Grimes and the Dems in the general election. McConnell may still lose, but he’ll at least make Grimes and the Dems work their butts off for the win, sucking a LOT of Dem money out of other races in the process.