Rove: Expect more ads attacking Judd

Karl Rove on Thursday said his political action committee will spend more money targeting actress Ashley Judd, who is reportedly considering a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2014.

Earlier this week, Rove’s American Crossroads group launched an attack ad in Kentucky blasting Judd as a Hollywood liberal and pointing out that the actress currently resides in Tennessee.

“We are making fun of her,” Rove told Fox News. “She is way far out on the left wing of the Democratic Party, which is not very far out left in Kentucky.”

“She’s going to get to know that she’s not going to be able to wait until the screenwriters from California and producers make her look good and prepare the ads and give her lots of lines to memorize so that she can handle these things,” Rove said.

Rove said the group was concerned that Judd’s celebrity could cloud voters’ judgment if McConnell and his conservative allies did not begin engaging her early in the election cycle.

{mosads}“We don’t want to have happen in Kentucky what happened in Minnesota where Al Franken knew, ‘I need to have a short campaign. I don’t want people to pay a lot of attention to me, I don’t want people to know a lot about me except I’m a celebrity and a nice guy,’” Rove said.

McConnell’s approval rating has faded recently in Kentucky, although he still remains a strong favorite for reelection. In a December poll from Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, Judd was the leading Democrat in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, with the incumbent senator holding a 5-point lead.

Judd hinted that she was contemplating a run while in Washington for the presidential inaugural festivities last month.

“I am certainly taking a close look at it,” she told the Louisville Courier-Journal at the Kentucky Society of Washington’s Bluegrass Ball.