Female Marine fighter pilot challenging Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat

Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who lost a closely watched House race in Kentucky last year, announced Tuesday she will challenge Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the long time GOP leader and President Trump ally.

She hit the senator hard in her video announcement, noting she wrote McConnell, who was a senator at the time, when she 13 to tell him she wanted to fly combat jets and fight for the U.S.

‘He never wrote back,’ she said in the video. ‘I’m Amy McGrath, and I’ve often wondered, how many other people did Mitch McConnell never take the time to write back or even think about?’

Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who lost a closely watched House race in Kentucky last year, is challenging Republican Senator Mitch McConnell

Senator Mitch McConnell won his last re-election bid by 56 per cent

Senator Mitch McConnell won his last re-election bid by 56 per cent

In her 3-minute video McGrath, 44, also introduces other people whom she wonders if McConnell ever wrote back including a woman with diabetes struggling to keep her health care insurance, a sick coal miner, and a student trying to pay for college.

”I think that this is a message that Kentuckians are ready for, you know?,’ McGrath said Tuesday on ‘Morning Joe.’

‘I never set out to be some politician. All I wanted to do with my life was fly fighter jets, serve my country and be a United States marine and I did that,’ she said, adding ‘for somebody like me who’s always stepped up the plate, who has always been somebody that wanted to serve my country felt like this was the right time to stand up and I think many Kentuckians will be ready for that,’ she said.

McConnell, 77, won his last re-election bid – in 2014 – with 56 per cent of the vote and Donald Trump carried Kentucky with 63 percent in the last presidential election.

But McGrath argued on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ that the promises Trump made to the state – to return jobs and lower drug prices – have actually been stymied by McConnell, who wields tremendous power over the Senate’s legislative agenda as leader of that chamber. 

‘He has been around for 34 years and I think this is different. This is a different because, you know, Kentucky voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and you can say Kentucky is a very red state but it’s a very pro Trump state,’ she said.

‘If you think about why Kentuckians voted for trump, they wanted to drain the swamp and Trump said he was going to do that. He promised to bring back jobs and promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians and that’s important. What stops them along the way? Who stops the president from doing these things? Well, Mitch McConnell,’ she noted.

‘I think that’s really important and that’s going to be, you know, my message, that the things that Kentuckians voted for trump for are not being done. He’s not able to get it done because of Mitch McConnell,’ she added.

McGrath, a Naval Academy graduate and mother of three, retired from the Marines in 2017 as a lieutenant colonel and moved back to Kentucky. 

She rose to national prominence last year with a viral video that outlined her personal story of becoming a Marine pilot despite the challenges she faced being a woman.

She challenged Republican Representative Andy Barr in a closely-fought race. Republicans hammered her hard and Barr ultimately won by 3 points thanks, in part, by a last minute visit to the state by Trump.

McGrath has her own Democratic star power visit in the form of former Vice President Joe Biden.  

In that House race, despite her strong personal story, Democrats weren’t sold on her as a candidate and supported then-Lexington Mayor Jim Gray in the primary.

But McGrath beat him and four other contenders to win the nomination. The party lined up behind her and gave her strong support in the general election contest. 

Republicans hammered her hard in that race for her support of abortion and for leaked audio from a fundraiser where McGrath says: ‘I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.’ 

Despite the loss, she was heavily recruited by Democrats to take on McConnell and her entry into the race is a win for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

President Trump will likely be a factor in the race; his campaign stop for GOP Representative Andy Barr (above) in October 2018 helped Barr defeat Amy McGrath

President Trump will likely be a factor in the race; his campaign stop for GOP Representative Andy Barr (above) in October 2018 helped Barr defeat Amy McGrath

McConnell, however, is a popular figure in the state with $5.6 million already in his campaign war chest.

He has also supported most of Trump’s agenda and has seen to it that the president’s judicial nominees have made it to the courts – including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – a point he repeatedly emphasizes. 

The president will likely campaign for him as he did for other Senate candidates in the 2018 election. 

McConnell’s power as Senate leader even came up in the first Democratic presidential primary debate as the contenders were asked how they would deal with the influential Republican.

He’s expected to argue during the upcoming campaign that he can use that power to benefit Kentucky.  

While McGrath will likely have plenty of financial support – given the Democrats desire to take McConnell out – the race will still be an uphill battle for the political neophyte. 

Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992. 

 

 

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