The Democrats Drive for 60 in the Senate

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Looking desperately for a redoubt, some Republicans are returning to the last refuge of incumbents: pork-barrel spending. McConnell now claims to have delivered $500 million in taxpayer funds to his state in the past year for projects that range from riverfront development to mobile health-care units. By comparison, he says, the most pork any freshman Democratic Senator delivered to a state last year was $16 million. "This is an election about whether or not we want Kentucky to go back to ... the back row, to go back to being a small state with little or no influence, or whether we still want to be a major player," McConnell said at a recent campaign stop.

Fighting back, Lunsford argues that pork projects don't make up for the economic policies McConnell has shepherded through the Senate. "Kentuckians don't have a chance to vote out George Bush," he says, "but they do have a chance to turn out his henchman." Election Day will determine whether voters are angry enough to do just that.