The Long Goodbye to McConnell – and a Race Without a Favorite

When Mitch McConnell arrived in Washington, D.C., as Kentucky’s junior senator, Ronald Reagan was just starting his second term in the White House. Rand Paul, Kentucky’s current junior senator, had just enrolled in medical school.

Gov. Andy Beshear, who today is contemplating a presidential run of his own, was a 7-year-old elementary school student living in the state capital where his father was lieutenant governor.

Thinking of Kentucky-born political activists, George Clooney was just getting his break in Hollywood as medical tech named “Ace” in the original version of ER (a sitcom), while Ashley Judd was still attending Franklin High School. In Kentucky thoroughbred racing, 3-year-old Spend a Buck was training for the 1985 Kentucky Derby, a race he would win on his way to being named Horse of the Year.

In other words, Mitch McConnell’s Senate career has lasted a very long time. But all things come to an end, and the prospect of choosing McConnell’s replacement is causing some uncertainty among rank-and-file voters in his home state. All of which is my way of saying that, with the primary a little more than three months away, the GOP primary is a three-candidate race with no clear front-runner. And a crowded Democratic Party field is still taking shape.

A new Emerson College Polling survey out this week shows Rep. Andy Barr ahead of former Attorney General Daniel Cameron 24%-21% with businessman Nate Morris at 14% in the GOP primary. Yes, Barr and Cameron are frontrunners, says Spencer Kimball, chief Emerson pollster, but Morris is “within striking distance.”

On the Democratic side, Louisville native Charles Booker, a former state representative, leads in the Emerson poll with 30% of the vote. It would be his third attempt at a Senate seat. In 2020, he lost the primary narrowly to Amy McGrath, a former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot. In 2022, Booker won the Democratic senatorial nomination but lost in the general election to Rand Paul. McGrath, who lost her 2020 general election campaign to McConnell by nearly 20 points, is back seeking a Senate race again, too. Right now, she’s registering 19% support in the Emerson survey.

If McGrath were to win, the general election could turn out to be a rematch of the 2018 congressional race that she lost to Andy Barr 51%-48%. No other Democrat in the senatorial contest has more than 4%, but with 43% of Democrats undecided, it’s still early in the race.

One intriguing longshot is famed Kentucky horse trainer Dale Romans, running as a Democrat.

“I’ve been in Kentucky my entire life and I think I know what Kentucky needs in Washington – an independent Democrat that can go to on to Washington, D.C., and vote for what’s right for the people of Kentucky,” Romans said in a video announcing his candidacy. Romans added that he would be neither under the thumb of the national Democratic Party nor a Donald Trump “puppet” – as he said any “Republican freshman senator would have to be.”

Perhaps that’s a winning formula in a general election, but Romans has a mountain to climb to compete for the Democratic nomination. Besides being a newcomer to party politics, he has a quirky twist of fate to overcome.

Romans’ greatest success as a horseman came in the 1985 Travers Stakes when his colt – a 16-1 shot who’d lost eight straight races – upset Triple Crown winner American Pharoah with an electrifying stretch run.

The problem might be the horse’s name. It was Keen Ice. And Democrats these days are not so keen on ICE.