Former Marine fighter pilot takes on most unpopular senator in America

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is in for the fight of his life in 2020, after former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath announced on Tuesday that she’ll run against the six-term Kentucky lawmaker.

In her announcement video, McGrath talks about how when she was a teenager she wrote a letter to McConnell to ask him to help change the laws so that she could fly fighter jets in combat — something that women were barred from doing at the time.

“He never wrote back,” McGrath says in a video announcing her bid, going on to wonder about the other people with problems McConnell never responded to.

In her announcement video, McGrath blames the lack of civility in politics on McConnell, “who has bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise.”

“I’m running for Senate because it shouldn’t be like this,” McGrath says.

I’m running to replace Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate. Everything that’s wrong with Washington had to start somewhere—it started with him. With your help, we can defeat Mitch and defend democracy. Join us: https://t.co/c4b0WAp4ji pic.twitter.com/DNLjFkHGua

— Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) July 9, 2019

McGrath ran for the House in Kentucky’s 6th District in 2018, coming up just 3 points short against GOP Rep. Andy Barr.

This time around, she’ll face McConnell — who, while almost universally known, is extremely unpopular. In fact, McConnell is the most unpopular sitting senator in the country.

McGrath has ample material to run against McConnell on, including McConnell’s vow to block any bipartisan legislation, his use of his wife’s role in Trump’s Cabinet for political gain, his indifference to suffering first responders from 9/11, and his blatant hypocrisy.

McConnell, on the other hand, will have ample funds to attack McGrath. But he should probably ditch the playbook her GOP opponent had in 2018, trivializing her military service and trying to distort her record of serving in the Marines.

Of course, Kentucky is an exceptionally hard state for a Democrat to win statewide, given it voted for Trump by a 30-point margin in 2016.

However, McConnell’s unique unpopularity will make this a race to watch.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.