Last night, Democrat Steve Beshear won the governorship of Kentucky by a 58.7 percent to 41.3 percent margin, knocking off a Republican incumbent and giving the Democrats some confidence and momentum heading into election day 2008 in the commonwealth, when Senate Majority Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be up for reelection. It's not yet clear just who will be McConnell's challenger next fall, but there's a lot of buzz going on surrounding state Auditor Crit Luallen, who won reelection by a wide margin last night. Mark Nickolas has the details via an email from a reader over at the Bluegrass Report.

I was at a Democratic Senate Campaign Committee fundraiser tonight at Senator Kennedy's home in Washington.  Senator Schumer spoke about next year's senate races to the 100 or so people attending. He talked most specifically about Kentucky and said that Crit Luallen - he mentioned her by name and the fact that she is now the state auditor - will soon be entering the race against McConnell (I think he said she has "pretty much decided to enter the race" or words to that effect).  He noted the DSCC polling showed her trailing McConnell by only three points (46 to 43 - close to the recent public polling). Anything more certain being reported in Kentucky at the moment?  Schumer made it sound like it was essentially a done deal, and he added that the DSCC was going to significantly back her.

Whether or not it's "a done deal", as Nickolas' emailer suggests, or not, it is clear that folks within Kentucky want to see Luallen run. Check out the new Draft Crit site up today from Kentucky native Liz Fossett.

Today, leading Democrats from across Kentucky launched a campaign to elect State Auditor Crit Luallen to the U.S. Senate. Yesterday, the Commonwealth of Kentucky showed its overwhelming confidence in Crit Luallen by electing her to her second term with over 60% percent of the vote.

By building on her statewide victory in 2003, State Auditor Luallen proved that she can win votes across the state, and give Kentucky a U.S. Senator they can be proud of. Her dependability and dedication to the people of Kentucky make her the ideal candidate to clean up Washington, DC with some real Kentucky values.

Today the campaign also launched a website, www.DraftCrit.com. Kentuckians are encouraged to visit the website to sign the petition to support Crit.

As I've said often on this site, Mitch McConnell is in an awful lot of trouble these days. Not only is he quite unpopular within Kentucky but now he's forced to run in a Kentucky that is seemingly a lot bluer than a whole lot of folks think. Crit Luallen might just be the right person to build on the Democrats' momentum from last night and knock McConnell off next year -- and if you'd like to see her get in the race, head over to DraftCrit.com and get involved.