Kentucky Politics Insider: Is another ’26 Senate campaign announcement coming soon?
Kentucky Politics Insider offers an analysis of Kentucky politics and the conversations that drive decisions. Email reporter Austin Horn at ahorn@herald-leader.com or ping him on social media sites with tips or comments.
A long-rumored candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky was spotted recently in Shelbyville alongside all the trappings of a political ad shoot: a large filming crew, a trailer, a sunny day shot of him on an idyllic downtown sidewalk.
It might be just a matter of time before Nate Morris, a tech entrepreneur based in Lexington, lets us in on what that video shoot was all about.
Politicians often announce either just before the quarterly fundraising deadlines — the most recent one closes Monday, June 30 — in order to either show a strong fundraising burst (“we raised $1 million in 5 days,” etc.) or just after to give them a full three months to rake in the donations before going public with the amount they’ve raised.
Morris should have little problem with the initial funding. In 2022 alone, Morris was compensated more than $40 million by his company Rubicon before it went public. That year he left the company, whose profitability has cratered in recent months.
A healthy amount of initial funding, or at least anticipated funding, seems clear based on the size of the film crew at his Shelbyville shoot. At least nine people were spotted helping out in a photo shot by a tipster.
Should the shoot presage a run for the office, Morris would be joining two Kentucky GOP heavyweights in the race to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, who earlier this year announced he would not seek reelection in 2026. Sixth Congressional District Rep. Andy Barr and former Attorney General Daniel Cameron both announced bids earlier this year.
Also of note: Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, a star of the online conservative movement, is set to appear in Shepherdsville for “a rally” on June 30. Morris has carved out something of a lane among Republicans of a similar generation and posture, like President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump, Jr and Vice President JD Vance.
Don’t be surprised if Morris is there — or if his candidacy is the point of the rally.
A spokesperson for Morris has yet to comment on the purpose of the filming.
Paul sidelined on budget talks as he stands against Trump on foreign policy
The headlines have mostly been reserved for Rep. Thomas Massie, whose stance against Trump’s actions in Iran have earned him greater fame and fierce ire from the president.
But POLITICO reported a fairly consequential bit of news on Kentucky’s junior senator over the weekend: Senate Republicans have sidelined him in discussions over funding portions of Trump’s marquee budget bill, known as the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Normally, Paul’s perch as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee would allow him to lead talks related to the agencies he helps oversee. Not so, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, the senior Republican who is taking Paul’s place in those discussions.
It comes as a result of Paul, a deficit and spending hawk, proposing much lower spending on border security than was initially in the massive budget bill.
“Senator Paul usually votes ‘no’ and blames everybody else for not being pure enough,” Graham told POLITICO in an interview. “As chairman, you … don’t have that luxury sometimes. You have to do things as chairman you wouldn’t have to do as a rank-and-file member.”
Could foreign policy prove a distinguishing point in Senate race?
All Republicans vying for McConnell’s seat in 2026 have been singing from the same hymnal: agreeing heartily with Trump.
But it’s possible the latest conflict in the Middle East could work to pry the candidates from one another, if only slightly.
We even got a flash of that in the early days of the Iran-Israel war, when Barr’s team saw an opportunity to tout their pro-Trump bona fides before Cameron and Morris had weighed in.
A release from last week was titled “Barr Blasts KY GOP Senate Opponents for Silence on Israel, Pledges to Stand with Trump.” He called his opponents’ relative silence at the time “deafening.”
Later, both Cameron and Morris began making public statements in support of the military action and diplomatic tack the Trump administration oversaw.
“Not a single American soldier lost. No endless war in the Middle East. Just a historic ceasefire agreement,” Cameron wrote recently.
Morris wrote that Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his maneuvering.
While you’ve seen more unanimity in recent days, one of the key points of Massie’s recent rebellion against Trump’s foreign policy is that a big chunk of the GOP is now non-interventionist and didn’t like engaging with Iran. If he’s right, might one of the three big GOP candidates seek to court that crowd?
On the Democratic side of things, Kentucky House Minority Floor Leader Pam Stevenson, who is also running for McConnell’s seat, stood against Trump’s action in Iran.
“The American people are deeply opposed to another war. Congress knows it. They would never have approved an escalation this unplanned and geopolitically reckless,” Stevenson wrote in a social media post Saturday.
McConnell Medicaid remarks draw swift backlash
McConnell may not be GOP leader anymore, but he’s still making headlines with his recent comments over potential cuts to Medicaid spending.
According to a report from Punchbowl News, McConnell said Tuesday during a closed-door Senate GOP meeting that voters would “get over” spending cuts proposed to Medicaid in the proposed budget bill currently in the Senate’s possession.
“I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it,” McConnell said, according to the outlet, also adding that “failure isn’t an option.”
McConnell’s speech came during a debate among GOP senators over the political viability of the cuts, which have not been finalized. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis warned that cuts could politically backfire on Republicans.
Kentucky is relatively dependent on Medicaid, with the Eastern Kentucky-centric 5th Congressional District having the 11th-most Medicaid enrollees of all 435 U.S. House districts in the country.
A McConnell spokesperson later clarified the senator’s comments, saying that he was speaking about people abusing Medicaid.
“Sen. McConnell was speaking about the people who are abusing Medicaid — the able-bodied Americans who should be working — and the need to withstand Democrats’ scare tactics when it comes to Medicaid,” the spokesperson wrote. “Sen. McConnell was urging his fellow members to highlight that message to our constituents and remind them that we should all be against waste, fraud, and abuse while working to protect our rural hospitals and have safety nets in place for people that need it.”
As GOP leader — a post he held until this year, longer than any senator of either party — McConnell was Democrats’ favorite Republican to hate. Several Democrats quickly pounced on his comments Tuesday.
‘”They’ll get over it’ is what Mitch McConnell has to say to the 16 million Americans who will have their health care terminated because of this disastrous Republican bill,” Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote on social media. “Republicans might not care if our constituents have health care, but I do.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has signaled it will get involved in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District race in 2026, chimed in as well.
“The most senior Kentucky Republican in D.C. wants workers and families in Kentucky to just ‘get over’ him and House Republicans ripping health care coverage away from 170,000 Kentuckians,” spokesperson Madison Andrus wrote in a statement to the Herald-Leader. “That’s not going to happen — and come next November, those Kentuckians will make sure House Republicans lose their majority over it.”
Jacqueline Coleman backs Cherlynn Stevenson
The Democratic primary for the open 6th Congressional District seat in 2026 now has two viable contenders in former Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilman David Kloiber and former House Democratic Caucus Chair Cherlynn Stevenson.
Stevenson, whose connections are naturally more statewide due to her prominence in Frankfort, just scored perhaps the biggest endorsement of the primary so far: Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman.
While it’s certainly a big deal for Stevenson, who is close friends with the lieutenant governor, it may be an even more important test for Coleman.
Coleman is generally believed to be eyeing a run for governor in 2027. Same goes for, at this moment in time, Rocky Adkins, a household name in Kentucky Democratic politics and current adviser to Gov. Andy Beshear.
While Coleman has proven a good Democrat who will show up for her colleagues in a general election, the Stevenson endorsement gives her an opportunity to flex her political muscle in a primary setting — a setting perhaps not so unlike the one she may face if both she and Adkins hop in the gubernatorial election.
On picking Stevenson, Coleman said she spoke with the candidate early in the process before anyone else had decided to run.
She added the race was so important to her because it includes her native Mercer County and she herself had discussions about potentially joining.
“It was an honor for people to try to encourage me to consider this, but ultimately, I decided that D.C. is not where I want to be,” Coleman told the Herald-Leader in an interview.
Does that mean she’s ready to run for governor?
“For me, it has to be the right time and situation, and that’s why I’m taking a good, hard look at it,” she said. “None of us can tell the future, but it’s going to be a big landscape change in Kentucky, with all of the retirements, moving from one seat to another, and all of the folks who are elected running for other seats now. So it’s going to look different, but none of us know how yet.
“This is something that I believe that I should take a serious look at, and so that’s what I’ve been doing — mainly listening, doing less talking and more listening.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
