Trey Grayson’s campaign for the U.S. Senate has a bone to pick with recent Rand Paul advertisements challenging Grayson’s loyalty to coal and tying him to Obama.

Nate Hodson, Grayson’s campaign manager, called the ad “wildly out of context.” At the Republican Convention in 2008, Grayson served as co-chair of the energy platform subcommittee, where “he worked to develop a comprehensive energy approach to give us energy independence – an all of the above approach,” Hodson said.

Hodson also noted that Ron Paul and Rand Paul were so bitter about not winning the nomination that they held an alternate convention across the street in Minneapolis.

“Instead of working with the party and coming together to win the presidency, they were working against Senator McCain,” Hodson said.

Hodson said that Paul’s attempt to tie Grayson to Obama is a complete “misrepresentation … and it shows Paul’s willingness to say and do anything to get elected.”

Grayson recorded a message, like many other leaders, on the president’s inauguration wishing him well and pledging to work with him and all other elected officials to solve our problems.  Paul has used the same clip in two additional ads.

Heiner vs. Thieneman

The Republican primary in the mayor’s race began as a contest between two friends and erstwhile allies, Hal Heiner and Chris Thieneman. Well, things are starting to get a little rough.

At a recent Louisville Forum, Heiner challenged Thieneman about his involvement with The Mint Jubilee, a charitable event that he co-founded.  Heiner claimed the event lost $75,000 in 2004.

“How can we trust you to run our city’s $800 million budget when you failed to manage a charity?” Heiner asked.

Thieneman got his licks in, too, asking Heiner where he was during disclosures of mismanagement in the city’s animal control department and housing agency.

A recent Courier-Journal/WHAS-TV Bluegrass Poll leads me to believe that the race will only get uglier. The poll showed Thieneman with a 34 percent to 30 percent lead over Heiner, with a margin of error of 4.7 percent. When races are this tight, they are never pretty.

I can guarantee you that this poll shocked almost everyone except Chris Thieneman. The conventional wisdom had Heiner cruising to victory in his primary, but it looks like he has a fight on his hands.

This is a strange year for Republican candidates. Republicans who are perceived as being “establishment” (e.g. Trey Grayson and Hal Heiner) are facing tougher than expected challenges from candidates who have positioned themselves as outsiders.

Bunning had a Point

Our readers know that we have written a lot about Sen. Jim Bunning’s misadventures over the last year. In the months leading up to his announcement that he would not run for reelection, he blew off votes and burned so many bridges that we’ve lost count.

So it may surprise you that I respect Bunning for refusing to vote to extend unemployment benefits because there was no clear plan to pay for it.

Of course, Bunning gave a TV producer the one-finger salute during the drama, but he was right to draw attention to the country’s out-of-control spending.

It was interesting to watch the left-leaning news shows completely freak out when Bunning was dug in. Instead of engaging in a serious debate about the deficit, Rachel Maddow wondered whether Bunning was starting to suffer from dementia. Have we reached the point where you are now impaired if you point out that we’re spending more than we’re bringing in?

Bunning may be mean, but he’s not crazy, and we will be better off if we start showing some restraint on our federal spending.

Julie and Ellen own Adams & Call Inc., a Louisville public affairs firm, and they are co-founders of loveysports.com. Visit ­adamsandcall.com.