‘Kentucky is the front line’: Charles Booker, DNC chair rally draws hundreds in Louisville

Look at any given list of the U.S. Senate seats most likely to flip this November, and Charles Booker doesn’t make the cut.

Not according to NPR, The Hill, Politico, CNN and others. In fact, FiveThirtyEight gives Booker less than a 1% chance of defeating incumbent Rand Paul in the general election.

But a defiant Booker, joined by Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, told a crowd of hundreds in Louisville Tuesday night that together, they’ll prove them all wrong.

“This is our rallying cry,” he said. “This is when we declare what our future holds, Kentucky. This is when we take that stand that no one saw coming. Folks across the country are like, ‘Don’t worry about Kentucky. Don’t invest in Kentucky. They’re a lost cause.’

“They don’t see us,” Booker said. “They’re looking past your life. They’re looking past your pain.”

Despite that, Booker urged his supporters to push through their cynicism and doubt and show up at the polls come Election Day.

“Democracy will succeed or it will fall apart based on how we show up,” he said. “I’m putting this pressure on us because I know what this means for us and what we’re made of. But Kentucky is the front line. We’ve always been the front line.”

Louisville resident Bernadette Mudd decided to attend the Booker rally after hearing so much about the candidate from her friend, Joanie Prentice, a campaign volunteer. Both women said they were moved to tears by Booker’s speech Tuesday night, and that he gives them the kind of hope they haven’t felt from a political candidate in Kentucky in a long time.

“I had a person in the crowd say to me, ‘Honestly, he probably won’t win,’ and I’m like, ‘What? Why are you here?’” Mudd said. “We have to have the attitude that he’s going to win. We have to have the attitude that we can be make a change.”

Cathy Mekus, an advocate for gun reform with Moms Demand Action of Kentucky, said she’s encountered the kind of doubt that Booker spoke of in her own activism. People doubt that anything will change, she said.

“There are a lot of people who will say that, ‘Well, nothing changed after Sandy Hook so nothing ever will,’ and to that we say: We changed,” Mekus said. “We are making a difference. ... We have a voice and we are using it.”

Rose Smith, whose son, Cory ‘Ace’ Crowe, was shot and killed in Louisville nearly eight years ago, was spurred into activism and politics with Moms Demand Action by that tragedy. Booker will win, Smith said, and she will do whatever it takes to help him do it.

“A lot of people don’t see it and don’t think that he can, and I believe that we’re going to get out there and do our part to help make him win,” Smith said. “When you think about it, who would have ever thought that Barack Obama would have won? I just feel the same way (about Booker).”

Harrison, speaking to the crowd, said the seeds for a “New South” have been planted — one that is bold, inclusive and diverse.

“Folks, let’s put the Republicans on notice, and your governor, Gov. Beshear, has already done that,” he said. “Out of the ashes of the Old South, will rise like a phoenix a New South. And that new phoenix has a name, and that name is Charles Booker.”