President Barack Obama is playing a starring role in Kentucky's hotly contested Senate race despite Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes' efforts to distance herself from him.
Grimes this week aired an ad in which she explicitly says she is not Obama and disavows his positions on guns, coal and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Her opponent, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, answered a day later with an ad saying Grimes had been a delegate for Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention and supports his platform of emissions restrictions as well as his support for an assault weapons ban. Grimes denies supporting those positions.
Recent public polls show the five-term Republican senator holding a consistent but narrow lead over Grimes in a state where Obama is deeply unpopular.
