McConnell calls McGrath too liberal for Kentucky. Did tough primary help her change that?
There is a Republican playbook for federal elections in Kentucky and it’s relatively simple — paint the Democratic candidate as the most bleeding-heart liberal to have ever shown their face this side of the Ohio River or the Big Sandy River or the Tug Fork.
Honed by U.S. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and deployed by members of his party in political campaigns from county judge to Congress, it’s a strategy that has worked, at least in federal statewide elections, since Wendell Ford decided not to run in 1998. So when former Marine Corps pilot Amy McGrath kicked off her campaign to challenge McConnell a little more than a year ago, his campaign was ready with the exact same clip that helped sink her 2018 Congressional bid.
“I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.”
That was before the primary, before Rep. Charles Booker — running on ideas like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and criminal justice reform — energized Democrats in part around the message that McGrath wasn’t liberal enough, wasn’t sufficiently progressive, wasn’t a real Democrat. And, with that message, he came only 15,000 votes shy of winning the election.
There are some disadvantages to competitive primaries. They can cost candidates a lot of money and lead to division among core voters, but they can also strengthen candidates as they head into the general election.
McGrath has now emerged from an unexpectedly close primary where the all-consuming message to Democrats over the past few weeks was that she isn’t liberal enough. Where the laundry list of national Democratic boogeymen that Republicans link Democrats to — U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — all endorsed the other guy.
For someone who has built her campaign strategy on the idea of stringing together a coalition of Democrats, moderate voters who are put off by President Donald Trump and conservatives who hate Mitch McConnell (though the campaign is hoping the latter don’t vote), being criticized as a moderate in a competitive primary may have been a blessing.
“The best thing that could have happened to her is that she was crowned as insufficiently progressive,” said Steven Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky. “She didn’t have to change a thing. Booker and his supporters did the work for her.”
But it could have also come at a cost. Booker gained momentum in part by positioning himself as the anti-McGrath: a bold, young progressive willing to take on the Democratic establishment. It was a strategy that capitalized on a resentment many in the Democratic Party felt about McGrath’s candidacy.
And insufficiently progressive is relative. While McGrath may appear to be too much of a moderate for much of the Democratic base, McConnell’s campaign will continue trying to sell the message, banking on the philosophy that any Democrat is too liberal for the state of Kentucky.
“If you look at McGrath’s positions and the fact that she will enable Schumer to set the agenda in the Senate — make no mistake about it — it will be on the hard-left,” McConnell told talk radio host Larry Glover on 590 WVLK in early July. “It will not be things that benefit our Kentucky.”
The disappearing middle
Most people do not pay very close attention to politics. Many Kentucky voters won’t study up on this election before they cast their ballots in November.
That’s why, according to Voss, the messaging of the primary may have helped McGrath. He said very little of the swing vote is made up of people who are politically active and aware. They tend to make their decision on the impression they get about a candidate, either through family members, friends or ads and headlines they’ve seen.
“With those folks, McGrath will in fact be aided by the fact that she was not sufficiently liberal,” Voss said. “McConnell is going to have to overcome that first impression they got that this is a pretty moderate candidate.”
Voss also said that most voters don’t really like to think of themselves as Republicans or Democrats, but instead think of themselves as Independents. Even if they end up voting for the same party year after year after year, it’s usually over the course of the election cycle that people are reminded why they end up voting for that party.
In Kentucky, Republicans have largely won those voters, particularly in statewide elections (the glaring exception is former Gov. Matt Bevin, but he vastly underperformed the rest of the Republican ticket). That means for the McConnell campaign, the strategy is simply reminding those voters why they’ve voted for a Republican every year.
“Kentucky is a state that is sticking with the president,” said Billy Piper, McConnell’s former chief of staff and campaign manager who now runs Fierce Government Relations in Washington D.C. “And there’s not a whole lot of space between Trump and McConnell in terms of support.”
There is also the question of whether there are many true middle of the road voters left. In 2018, McGrath had a similar strategy, where she campaigned on the idea that people wanted someone who wasn’t beholden to a political party. She often cites former Sen. John McCain as one of her political heroes.
But McGrath came up short in that race. Former Gov. Paul Patton, a Democrat, said he feels that middle of the road voter McGrath is trying to target “is just about gone.”
“I think the middle is getting smaller and smaller,” Patton said. “People are just like my way or the highway, and that’s both parties.”
Or, to put it in Republican parlance, there aren’t many people who will vote for Trump and then Amy McGrath.
“No Republican is going to vote for McGrath,” Piper said. “Who’s the Trump McGrath voter? If that criticism has done anything, it’s hurt her on the left.”
Resentment in the base
McGrath has run her race under the assumption that in the fall, Democrats will fall in line. It has been her strategy since the beginning of the race, when she claimed McConnell has stood in the way of Trump’s campaign pledges for infrastructure reform and lowering prescription drug prices. It’s built on the notion that Democratic voters dislike Trump and McConnell so much that they won’t miss the opportunity to show up to the polls and vote against them.
But in the first few weeks after the primary, party unity has proven elusive. While McGrath’s team has said it is frequently in touch with Booker’s team, Booker has yet to openly embrace McGrath as the Democratic nominee. On Matt Jones’ Podcast, which was posted July 14, Booker said he’s going to help her but doesn’t believe this race is about McGrath.
“My focus was never Amy McGrath,” Booker said. “And in coming out of this primary, I’m trying to make it clear to folks that this still ain’t about her. And I need her to understand that.”
He went on to say the ultimate goal is to beat McConnell, but that he won’t campaign with McGrath unless she listens to him and takes his input. Booker said no matter what he plans to use the infrastructure his campaign built to get people who voted for him involved.
Booker Thursday announced he was starting an advocacy group called Hood to Holler that he said would focus on increasing democratic participation and breaking down barriers surrounding the topics of racial justice, generational poverty.
Booker doesn’t have control over everyone who voted for him though. Ricky Jones, the chairman of the University of Louisville’s Pan-African studies department, made it very clear on Twitter Tuesday that he would not be voting for McGrath in November and would be writing-in Booker instead.
When others on the site pushed back, claiming that Jones would be throwing away his vote and would help ensure McConnell’s victory, Jones wasn’t moved.
“You’re ASSUMING McGrath can or will win,” he replied to one user. “I’m not.”
But among some progressive Democrats, there is also an attitude that it is simply impossible to beat McConnell by running a candidate like McGrath. Part of that criticism is about her policy positions, but some of it focuses on whether she possesses the charisma necessary to bring new Democratic voters into the fold. And to some of those voters, like Jones, that presents the opportunity to send the Democratic Party a message.
“Amy’s going to have to go out there and earn their vote,” said Mark Nickolas, McGrath’s campaign manager. “This is not something we take for granted.”
While McGrath was heralded as an authentic, fresh candidate in 2018, her star has dimmed. And it has given Republicans an opening to criticize her ability to inspire the Democratic base. Piper, the former McConnell chief of staff, said he felt the Democratic primary was more about “energy and conviction” than it was about policy positions.
“It has now been borne out by the evidence of three years of campaigning,” Piper said. “She’s not good at this and she’s incapable of getting better.”
Nickolas said he’s “not overly concerned” about Democrats refusing to vote for McGrath in November.
“I think that the stakes are so high in this election that Democrats who wish she was further left, I think they’re the ones who are going to vote in November,” Nickolas said. “They see Donald Trump as an existential threat and to a lesser extent Mitch McConnell.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 10:16 AM.
