Why wouldn’t she answer?

In Kentucky, Democrat Alison Grimes, the Secretary of State, is trying to unseat longtime Republican Senator Mitch McConnell.

The political types are focusing on the question she has refused to answer throughout her campaign. Did you vote for Barack Obama?

“Our constitution grants, here in Kentucky, the constitutional right for privacy at the ballot box, for a secret ballot,” Grimes responded.

She refuses to say. It makes her sound silly. So why would she not answer such a simple question? Because in Kentucky, politics appears to be all about:

“What the EPA is doing and the war on coal.”

Coal, in Kentucky, appears to be the magic word.

“The job of a United States senator from Kentucky is to fight for coal jobs in our state,” McConnell said.

“Senator McConnell fails to see he has a role in all of the jobs that have been lost here in the state,” Grimes said. “They’ve happened on your watch, senator. You’ve been there for 30 years and you don’t want to take any responsibility.”

“Secretary Grimes, if I may, this is a Barack Obama war on the coal industry through the EPA,” McConnell said.

In Kentucky, 78,000 jobs depend on coal and with Democratic environmental groups treating the coal industry like it was the tobacco industry, Allison Grimes, as silly as it may make her sound, has no choice but to try to make it clear she has nothing to do with a man who once said:

“Somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can. It’s just that it’s going to bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” said President Obama.