By Sean Southard, Vice Chair, College Republicans:

Columnist George Will recently wrote an article and called the election between Kentucky Senate the most important election of 2014. Across the partisan spectrum, I think that nearly everyone agrees that this election has implications for Kentucky and the United States. The Democratic Party and Alison Lundergan Grimes would like you to vote for their party. Before you cast your ballot this Election Day, I ask you to consider how Sen. Mitch McConnell has looked out for Kentucky’s interests, supported Kentucky’s women and students and demonstrated that he is able to lead when the President and others cannot.

McConnell has consistently looked out for Kentucky’s interests while serving in the Senate. His record includes securing funding for Kentucky’s universities, protecting the first amendment right to free speech and defeating legislation that hurts Kentucky. He led the charge with Sen. Rand Paul to allow Kentucky to begin industrial hemp production. Upon learning of the harmful conditions at the Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, McConnell directed one billion dollars towards safe disposal of nuclear waste and health screening for employees. He is fighting the prescription drug epidemic that is sweeping Kentucky. All of these achievements are possible because McConnell is at the forefront of the political fray and Kentucky’s interests are with him.

Democrats will tell you that a vote for McConnell is a vote against women and students. Grimes loves to cite McConnell’s votes against the Violence Against Women Act as evidence for the Republican Party’s “war on women,” but neglects the fact that he voted for several versions of the Violence Against Women Act in 1992 and 1993. He supported it when Republicans controlled Congress in 2005. They also like to say that he is against ‘equal pay for equal work,’ even though it has been illegal since the 1960s to discriminate because of gender.

Critics claim McConnell doesn’t understand what it is like to deal with student loan debt. However, the Senate under McConnell’s leadership voted on a bipartisan basis to keep student loan interest rates low in 2013 – a bill that President Barack Obama signed into law. McConnell also studied at the University of Louisville and earned a degree in political science and a law degree at the other big university in Kentucky (the blue one). Grimes did her undergraduate studies at a private school in Tennessee and acquired her law degree from the swanky American University – located in the heart of Washington, D.C. Who is more in-touch with Kentucky students paying for college: someone who chose the less expensive, in-state public universities or someone who paid for an expensive, out-of-state education?

Democrats call McConnell the “Guardian of Gridlock,” as they try to pin Washington’s dysfunction on him. The last five years reveals that such an idea is false. When taxes were about to skyrocket in 2010, Vice President Joe Biden and McConnell negotiated an extension. Remember the government shutdown in 2013? Biden and McConnell brokered a deal to re-open it. When the so-called fiscal cliff emerged as a threat to our national debt in 2012, they stepped up again to solve party differences. After McConnell and Biden reached their last deal, Lou Dobbs asked an important question: “McConnell was the adult here … what would have happened had he not been there?” McConnell has shown that he does not represent gridlock, but that he is a leader capable of crossing the party line when leadership is needed – a rare act in our polarized political climate.

A vote for McConnell will put Republicans in control of the Senate. History instructs us that a Republican Congress and a Democratic president can achieve great accomplishments. During the Clinton presidency, with divided government, the parties were able to balance the budget and reform our welfare system in ways that looked to the future. It is possible that with the re-election of McConnell, Kentucky can bring an era of healing to our nation’s lawmaking process. You won’t get that by voting for Alison Lundergan Grimes.