Clinton to help Dems in ’14 races

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Bill Clinton, popular in territory unfriendly to President Barack Obama, is reprising his role as a super-surrogate for Democrats battling to keep their Senate majority and win other races. In the long run, Clinton could pick up political chits for his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she run for president in 2016.

The political terrain is rough in these Senate battleground states. Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is unpopular. Obama himself has soft poll numbers. Many Democrats won’t appear with the president, even though they’ll accept his prodigious fundraising help.

Not so with Clinton, who appears today in Louisville, Ky., with Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democrat who’s trying to unseat Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. It’s perhaps the nation’s hardest-fought Senate race in a state where Obama would be of little help.

Clinton is the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry a swath of Southern states crucial to the 2014 midterms, including his native Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana. The former president remains in heavy demand as a fundraiser and adviser as his wife plans an upcoming book tour and considers how she may help Democrats this year.

“He has an open invitation from me,” Ed FitzGerald, a Democrat challenging GOP Ohio Gov. John Kasich, said of Clinton.

The former president is busily involved in politics on his home turf, where he served five terms as governor and keeps an apartment at his presidential library.