Ashley Judd’s Next Role: Senate Candidate. Would You Vote for this "Radical"?

Judd at a Tennesseans For Obama Benefit. Photo: Getty Images/Rick DiamondWe’ve seen plenty of male actors turned politicians: Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Fred Thompson, Fred Grandy, just for starters. But the female version—Shirley Temple Black, Eva Perón… Anyone? Anyone?— has been decidedly shorter.

Now Ashley Judd hopes to change that, despite snickers about her run that are louder than bombs.

Her potential 2014 run against conservative Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell seems all but sewn up, according to a Friday report in Fox411’s Pop Tarts column. In it, an unnamed source was quoted as saying, “At least in Ashley’s mind, it is happening. She has devoted herself to many important causes and stepped away from the Hollywood spotlight so this seems like the logical next step. I don't know if she will be successful, but her heart is in the right place.”

Reactions in the Twitterverse were swift and harsh, with critics calling the news “beyond pitiful,” “funny” and Judd “stupid” an “airhead bimbo” and “Elmer Fudd.” (Huh?)

But all that was nothing compared to the aggressive, muckraking campaign against her that’s already been in full swing thanks to Karl Rove, National Review, the Daily Caller and McConnell’s own reelection campaign. They’ve called Judd, respectively, a ditzy “radical,” an occasional non-voting citizen, “outrageous and extreme,” and a shameless fool.

Still, it’s unclear what her offenses have really been, besides being pretty, of Hollywood, in favor of Obama and Planned Parenthood, and against mountaintop-removal mining and procreation (“It’s unconscionable to breed with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries,” Judd told the Sunday Mail in 2006. Uh oh.)

And Judd, who has starred in film, TV and on Broadway, and who has written and published her memoir, is far from being a ditz. She has a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has been a political activist for years, rallying around issues which have included protecting the environment, preserving reproductive rights, preventing AIDS and stopping sexual violence in the Congo.

She’s been photographed in a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt and has called feminism her “truth.” And, noted Salon writer Irin Carmon recently, “She uses the word ‘patriarchy’ a lot, which even in last year’s feminist frenzy at the Democratic National Convention hasn’t been heard on the public stage much lately.”

We can't speak to how Judd would be as a senator. But at the very least, between the Violence Against Women Act almost being defeated, the passage of Arkansas’ new abortion law, and news of the wage gap between women and men getting even wider, seems to us like a fine time to bring the word back.

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