All 3 major KY GOP Senate candidates have ties to McConnell. What are they?
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- Senate candidates Nate Morris, Andy Barr and Daniel Cameron all interned for Sen. Mitch McConnell
- McConnell has stayed neutral in the race, but some of his donors have backed Andy Barr
- Nate Morris is going the most negative against McConnell of any candidate
They don’t call Mitch McConnell the “Godfather” of the Kentucky GOP for no reason.
For more than a decade, he was the lone statewide elected Republican in Kentucky.
Even as he rose to become one of the most powerful senators in modern history, the longtime Senate GOP leader remained heavily invested in the health of his state party. He’s recruited several candidates, monetarily supported dozens more and pipelined several staffers into prominent elected offices and national roles.
The state headquarters in Frankfort even bears his name.
It might come as no surprise, then, that all three of the leading Republican candidates to replace him have ties to McConnell. In fact, they’ve all worked in his office at some point.
How each of them speaks about the senator they’re trying to replace varies.
Lexington tech entrepreneur Nate Morris launched his campaign as a repudiation of McConnell’s brand of Republicanism, saying he aims to rid the state of the “stench of Mitch.”
Former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and 6th Congressional District Rep. Andy Barr have offered some criticisms here and there — particularly where McConnell has differed with President Donald Trump — but neither have approached the severity of Morris’ comments.
A McConnell spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story and the senator has not commented much on the matter. However, McConnell has said he believes the race will be more about a vision for the future than litigating the past.
“I’m not going to be running next year,” McConnell said in a March press appearance. “The race will be about the future.”
Much of Morris’ rhetoric around McConnell has sought to mirror that of Trump, who is hugely popular in Kentucky and often speaks ill of McConnell.
McConnell has opposed Trump in some recent high-profile cases like the nominations of National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, but his overall voting record has hewn much closer to Trump than Kentucky’s other senator, Rand Paul.
According to a voting analysis from Congressional Quarterly, McConnell sided with Trump almost 98% of the time compared to Paul’s 88% during Trump’s first term. So far in 2025, McConnell voted with Trump 94.7% of the time to Paul’s 91.6%.
Cameron-McConnell history
Cameron, who was once seen as a protege of McConnell, has the longest history with the 83-year-old Senator.
His relationship with McConnell, who stepped down as Senate GOP leader early this year as the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, has long been a talking point in Kentucky politics.
It began when the 39-year-old former AG was a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville, interning at the senator’s office after his first year at the school where he also played football.
It was in McConnell’s office then that Cameron got his first taste of professional politics, telling the Associated Press in a 2006 article that he enjoyed watching “the daily cogs of democracy” while also keeping up his weightlifting routine for the Cardinals.
The headline of the story: “Cards’ Cameron gets political.”
Cameron’s political career was largely intertwined with McConnell’s from then on.
His first job out of law school was clerking for Gregory Van Tatenhove, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Kentucky who also worked in McConnell’s office. In his first political run, a successful bid to become attorney general, Cameron was identified mostly as McConnell’s former legal counsel.
In his first run for office, a 2019 primary election against then-state senator Wil Schroder and then Kentucky Democratic stalwart Greg Stumbo, Cameron was supported by a nonprofit “dark money” group with ties to McConnell.
A rebranded version of that same group gave a PAC supporting Cameron more than $2 million in his 2023 run for governor, when he won the GOP nomination but lost to Gov. Andy Beshear by five points in the general election.
Also in 2023, McConnell’s chief of staff Terry Carmack stepped away from the senator’s office to help lead Cameron’s campaign.
After the loss, Trump laid the blame at McConnell’s feet, claiming the ex-AG “couldn’t alleviate the stench of Mitch McConnell.”
Such apparent ties are not present in Cameron’s current campaign, in which McConnell has indicated he will remain neutral.
In response to a question for this story, Cameron sent a statement stressing that he had stood with Trump “through the ups and downs,” and always would.
“The reason I’m the leading candidate by well over 20 points in every poll is simple: Kentuckians know I’m the candidate most aligned with Trump’s America First vision and values. I’m running to make sure Kentucky has a U.S. Senator who understands all 120 counties and stands with President Trump every step of the way,” Cameron wrote.
Andy Barr, former intern
Rep. Andy Barr has only one official credential under McConnell: he interned for him one summer in 1993.
But much attention has been paid to his recent comments about the senator and where his impressive haul of cash has come from.
The Morris campaign and groups aiming to bring down Barr have used a television interview clip of Barr referring to McConnell as a “mentor” repeatedly. Club For Growth, a high-powered conservative advocacy group, showed the clip in a recent ad to call Barr “Mitch McConnell’s mini-me.”
With Barr, 52, being a Washington veteran in his own right — he’s served since knocking off former congressman Ben Chandler in 2012 — he has regularly worked with McConnell in a decade-plus of budget fights, Kentucky-specific issues and more.
Further, many longtime McConnell fundraisers appear to be helping Barr.
According to a copy of an invitation for a June fundraiser for Barr at the home of Darrell Wells, a McConnell supporter dating back decades, the list of McConnell stalwarts backing Barr is long.
The list of the event “host committee” includes Irv and Cathy Bailey, the latter of whom served as ambassador to Latvia; banker Terry Forcht; Republican Party of Kentucky National Committeeman John McCarthy; former state party chair Mac Brown and Ed Glasscock, chairman emeritus of prominent law firm Frost Brown Todd.
Frost Brown Todd is a politically connected firm where Cameron, as well as fellow former McConnell staffer and current Attorney General Russell Coleman, has worked.
Trey Grayson, the former secretary of state and current lobbyist for Frost Brown Todd, agreed that the June fundraiser list was indicative of McConnell’s in-state fundraising network tilting toward Barr. He also called the list “the kind of host committee any Republican would be proud of.”
Like Cameron, Barr’s campaign provided a statement hammering home his own support for Trump. He emphasized that he’s the only person in the race who has worked directly on federal policy like the recent “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“I’m the only candidate in this race who has a proven record of working with President Trump to deliver tax cuts, secure the border, and implement the America First agenda,” he said. “I was proud to serve as Trump’s Chairman in Kentucky and I’ll be his biggest ally in the Senate.
“While others run from their record and hide from their past, I’m proud of my work with President Trump and can’t wait for all we accomplish next for Kentucky,” Barr wrote.
Morris: once a supporter and intern, now an opponent
Morris has made headlines for his intense, at times crass, negative comments against McConnell.
At the start of Morris’ political involvement, he was an intern for both McConnell and McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, when she was labor secretary under former president George W. Bush. In 2004, he was also noted in a Herald-Leader story as a key fundraiser for both Bush and McConnell at the young age of 23.
“Everybody knows Nate,” McConnell said at the time. “Nate is the kind of kid you remember because he seems to be so sincere and so dedicated to the cause, he kind of stands out. It’s obvious that it’s an important part of his life.”
20 years later, Morris, 44, has no nice words for McConnell.
Taking out the proverbial trash – Morris founded a waste software company, Rubicon, which went public before its valuation tanked – was the theme of his opening ad. It featured a cardboard cutout of McConnell as well as representations of Cameron and Barr.
In 2013 and 2014, when McConnell was gearing up for a reelection bid, Morris contributed a little over $7,000 to the senator.
Around that time, however, Morris was identified more closely with Paul than McConnell, especially as Paul was gearing up for his presidential bid in 2016.
Barr and Cameron have both been highly critical of Morris, calling him “fake” for allegedly liberal actions taken by Rubicon as well as what they see as flip-flops on McConnell. Cameron said Morris has an “authenticity problem.”
“He got his start in politics working for McConnell. Now, he pretends there is some virtue in taking cheap shots at an 83-year-old man. Nate’s not brave, he’s an opportunist,” Cameron told FOX News.
Morris’ campaign did not comment for this story.
However, a spokesperson emphasized to FOX News Barr’s “mentor” comment and a glowing post to social media about McConnell Cameron made last year.
“Kentuckians know that Andy Barr and Daniel Cameron are fully-owned subsidiaries of Mitch McConnell and that Nate Morris is the only candidate Kentuckians can trust to bring an end to McConnell Inc,” the spokesperson said.
