The most powerful person in the Senate is up for reelection next year — and he’s drawn a new challenger hoping to make her case to Kentuckians.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has served in Congress’ upper chamber since 1985. In that time, he’s joined in — and increasingly, led — bare-knuckle political brawls over health care reforms, judicial nominations and myriad other issues.
Every six years, Democrats look for a challenger for the long-serving incumbent. This time around, they’ve found one they hope is formidable — Northern Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot.
McGrath, who lost a bid to represent Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives by three points last year, announced her Senate candidacy today with a three-minute video. In the ad, she recounts a letter she wrote at 13 to McConnell, even then Kentucky’s Senator, relating her dreams of being a fighter pilot. She asked McConnell to advocate for women being allowed into combat, but says she never received a reply to her letter.
Over minor-key strings and piano, McGrath widens that experience out to condemn McConnell for what she says is his role in increasing partisanship and gridlock in Washington.
“I’ve often wondered, how many other people did Mitch McConnell never take the time to write back, or even think about?” she says as the ad highlights other Kentuckians who say they have written McConnell without an answer. “Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace. How did it come to this, that even in our own families, we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame? Well, it started with this man, who was elected a lifetime ago and who has, bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise, where dysfunction and chaos are political weapons.”
As Senate Majority Leader during the Obama administration, McConnell engineered a number of moves obstructing the president’s agenda — most famously, by denying Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch in the president’s final year of his second term. McConnell’s procedural tactics, some unprecedented in the history of the Senate, have drawn ire from Democrats.
He has enjoyed support in Kentucky, however, which voted for Republican President Donald Trump by roughly 30 points in 2016 and hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 27 years. He bested his last challenger, then-Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, with 56 percent of the vote in 2014.
But some polls show he’s one of the most disliked Senators in Congress, with roughly half of Bluegrass State voters saying they view him unfavorably. And recent controversies — a resurfaced photo from the 1990s showing McConnell in front of a Confederate flag, ethics questions about government grants allegedly shepherded to Kentucky as McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao serves as Secretary of Transportation and revelations that McConnell’s ancestors owned slaves — may not help that.
McConnell’s campaign has taken an unconcerned tone in response to McGrath’s candidacy, however, today tweeting a video showing McGrath making statements supporting abortion rights, universal healthcare and other progressive issues with a terse message.
“Welcome to the race, Amy,” the tweet reads.
This article appears in Jul 3-10, 2019.