Amy McGrath launches 2020 bid to take down Mitch McConnell
Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot, announced her Democratic bid on Tuesday to take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2020 election.
McGrath, a 44-year-old mother of three, released a video blaming the divisiveness of politics on the Kentucky Republican, saying, “I’m running for Senate because it shouldn’t be like this.”
She said in the three-minute video that she wrote to McConnell when she was 13 to tell him she wanted to fly fighter jets in combat to “fight for my country and that women should be able to do that.”
”He never wrote back,” she says. “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?”
Remarking how politics has torn families apart with “anger and blame,” she said that “everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace.”
“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.”
The political newcomer became a possible challenger to McConnell after her strong showing in the 2018 midterm elections, when she ran a strong campaign to unseat Republican incumbent Andy Barr in Congress.
She lost by fewer than 10,000 votes.
But she’ll be facing off against one of the country’s top Republicans in a state President Trump won by nearly 30 points.
In an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday, McGrath acknowledged Kentucky is a “pro-Trump” state and said voters elected the president because of his campaign promises.
“The things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done. He’s not able to get it done because of Sen. McConnell,” she said.
McConnell’s re-election campaign painted McGrath as a liberal out of touch with voters.
“Amy McGrath lost her only race in a Democratic wave election because she is an extreme liberal who is far out of touch with Kentuckians,” said campaign chairman Kevin Golden. “Comparing President Trump’s election to 9/11, endorsing a government takeover of health care, and calling the wall ‘stupid’ is a heckuva platform that we will be delighted to discuss over the next 16 months.”
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