Campaigning in COVID-19 hot spots? McGrath, McConnell weigh safety as election ends.
There’s an old rule for political staffers planning campaign events: never book a room you can’t fill.
At least, that was the rule before social distancing. Before masks. Before Kentucky was in the middle of its third surge of COVID-19 cases, facing record-breaking day after record-breaking day, with more than 60 counties experiencing “critical” spread of the virus.
The last week of the campaign is when candidates make their final push to energize supporters and convince more people to vote. Around this time in 2019, President Donald Trump was holding a rally at Rupp Arena for former Gov. Matt Bevin. In 2018, Amy McGrath had a rally with former Vice President Joe Biden in Bath County while Rep. Andy Barr had a rally with Trump in Richmond.
No such events are happening this year in Kentucky.
“Elections are important but so is people’s public health,” said Gov. Andy Beshear Tuesday, when asked about holding campaign events while cases are surging. “And I hope that anyone hosting an event will be as careful as they can be.”
He said campaigns should try to do virtual events as much as possible in “red zone” counties and that any public events should follow strict public health guidelines. His recommendations technically don’t take effect until Monday.
In the race for U.S. Senate, that has meant much, much smaller events, typically outdoors, with fewer supporters.
Amy McGrath, the Democratic nominee, has been holding socially distant events for months. At a hybrid rally and concert in Louisville Tuesday, chairs grouped in twos and threes were spread out on the pavilion of Lynn Family Stadium. It was outside. Everyone wore a mask.
“I don’t do massive events,” McGrath said after. “As you can see here, this is not exactly a massive event. We do it mostly for folks online who are staying at home. But they want to be inspired and they want to hear us and they want to hear from us.”
The next day, Sen. Mitch McConnell started a push of his own, holding his first official campaign events since the summer (he has traveled the state in his “official” capacity as U.S. senator through most of the year). He said his campaign is actively avoiding the counties that are in the “red zone,” which are counties that have averaged at least 25 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days.
“We can’t ignore the existence of the virus. It’s there,” McConnell said. “This is the challenge the country has to grapple with no matter who wins next Tuesday. I’ve played, I think, an important role in grappling with it.”
Avoiding counties in the red zone is tricky — between Tuesday and Wednesday, nine counties were added to the list — and McConnell has sent surrogates to Republican campaign events where restrictions were not strictly followed. But with Louisville firmly in the red zone at 35.9 cases per 100,000 people Wednesday, avoiding red counties is more difficult for McGrath, who needs high turnout in Kentucky’s largest cities.
As of Tuesday, Jefferson County ranked 11th in early voting turnout at 36.9 percent, according to data from the Kentucky State Board of Elections.
McGrath has been critical of how McConnell and the federal government have handled the pandemic, specifically the absence of a national testing and tracing plan to track cases of the virus and the lack of additional COVID-19 relief funds to help prop up the economy as cases are expected to rise when cold weather hits.
After confirming U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett Monday, McConnell adjourned the Senate until after the election without passing a COVID-19 relief bill. He has routinely blamed House Democrats for refusing to negotiate, but both House Democrats and the White House have pressed for a larger stimulus package than he has proposed.
There is a disconnect between McConnell — a 78-year-old polio survivor who is in the at-risk population for COVID-19 — and many members of his party, including Trump, who have chafed at COVID-19 restrictions.
While all supporters at his event in Anderson County were wearing masks and spread out when McConnell arrived, Marilyn McDaniel, 83, compared the virus to pneumonia and said she didn’t believe “we should live in fear.”
When asked what the most important issue in this election, she said she felt Democrats were threatening her way of life.
“Right now, it’s the constitution,” McDaniel said.
It matched McConnell’s closing message, that Democrats were “in a hurry” to change the country.
“They want to fundamentally change America,” McConnell said, tying McGrath to national Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. “They want these coastal elites to tell us what to think.”
McGrath expressed similar urgency in Louisville, in the opposite direction, saying Kentucky could do better and deserved better than McConnell. She implored the crowd, some of whom had already voted, to convince as many people to vote as possible.
Sue Foster, 64, was one of the people who had already voted. She said she expected to “shock the world” on Election Day with turnout in Louisville.
“Mitch McConnell is no longer a Kentucky servant,” Foster said. “He’s a Kentucky deadbeat.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 9:25 AM.
