Pro-Andy Barr PAC revs up US Senate 2026 TV presence with ‘Fake Nate Morris’ ad

A political action committee supporting Rep. Andy Barr’s run for U.S. Senate placed a $1.2 million ad buy Wednesday.

The buy marks the first seven-figure ad buy of any television ad campaign in the race that isn’t coming from Nate Morris, a Lexington tech entrepreneur. Morris’ ads touting his personal story and hitting his opponents have dominated the air waves in the early days of the race.

The new ad from the PAC, Keep America Great, runs through Labor Day, according to PAC leader and former Barr staffer Tyler Staker. It aims to define Morris in a negative light for Republican primary voters, repeating a similarly expletive-punctuated line from an earlier digital ad after it details Morris’ contribution to a PAC led by former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, which was made before Haley decided to run for president.

“Fake Nate Morris: fully woke and full of sh—,” the ad states.

The line was repeated in Staker’s statement to the Herald-Leader on the ad.

“Fake Nate Morris’ campaign is built on lies. He’s backed anti-Trump policies, funded anti-Trump candidates, and now he’s lying to Kentucky conservatives to cover it up. Morris’ record proves he can’t be trusted, and Keep America Great will make sure voters are reminded of it every step of the way,” Staker wrote.

Morris’ campaign is still outspending the PAC backing Barr on television, and campaign spokesperson Conor McGuinness called the latest ad an example of the pro-Barr camp “hitting the panic button,” and tied Barr to Sen. Mitch McConnell, the outgoing senator they’re both seeking to replace.

“Andy Barr is hitting the panic button because he has been exposed as a fully-owned subsidiary of Mitch McConnell and there is nothing he can say to deny it. That’s why he is pathetically resorting to lying about Nate. The fact is, Nate is the only political outsider in this race, the only candidate not owned by Mitch McConnell, and the only candidate Donald Trump can trust in the U.S. Senate to deliver his America First agenda,” McGuinness wrote.

Both the PACs and campaigns of Barr and former Attorney General Daniel Cameron have directed much of their energy at hitting Morris. At times, the race has resembled a two-on-one fight, with Cameron and Barr going softer on each other than they have Morris.

Morris, a relative political unknown before launching his run for office, is the founder of the Lexington-based company software and waste company Rubicon.

That company was one of few Kentucky-based groups to go public on the New York Stock Exchange when it did so in 2022, but its fortunes turned shortly thereafter. Stock prices plummeted as Morris left his leadership role, and the company was delisted in 2024. In 2022 alone, Morris was reportedly compensated $40 million.

Morris’ campaign has spent well over a million thus far in the ad race.

Starting the race with low name ID, Morris began making headlines for his stark criticism McConnell, whose seat he, Barr and Cameron are all trying to fill as the 83-year-old Senator has opted not to seek reelection. That approach has enthused some Kentuckians but enraged others loyal to McConnell for his role in building the Republican Party over his 40-plus years in office.

All three candidates have some ties to McConnell, but Cameron’s professional roots are the strongest, and Barr appears to have gained the most traction with longtime deep-pocketed McConnell donors during this cycle. Morris interned for McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, and was seen as an ally in his days as a young political fundraiser but drifted from that political orbit in recent years.

Keep America Great reported receiving more than $702,000 in donations to the Federal Elections Commission as of June 31. The PAC’s biggest donors include:

• $125,000 from American Society of Anesthetologists PAC
• $110,000 from Defend Us Inc, a conservative “dark money” nonprofit group
• $100,000 from Brett Setzer, a Lexington developer
• $100,000 from Eric and Tamara Gustavson, a multi-billionaire Lexington resident, storage company executive and owner of Spendthrift farm
• $88,000 from Scott Crockett, a Florida-based financial entrepreneur
• $88,000 from Bourbon Capital 1, LLC, a bourbon-centric investment firm

Though no public polling has been conducted on the race in months, the last publicly-available poll had Cameron leading the pack by a wide margin.

Cameron is a mainstay in statewide Kentucky politics. He won a statewide election to gain the attorney general’s office in 2019, making national news repeatedly during his tenure over his office’s handling of the investigation into the police killing of Breonna Taylor, and suffering a five-point loss to Gov. Andy Beshear in the Democratic governor’s reelection bid in 2023.

Cameron’s fundraising, however, has lagged behind Barr’s during the first two cycles of the campaign.

Barr is popular in his native Central Kentucky, winning in landslide fashion the last three election cycles, but remains less known elsewhere. He claims that his popularity in the region can transfer over into other parts of the state, and that Central Kentucky will prove an essential battleground should a Democrat with high statewide name ID and popularity like Beshear get in, though the governor has repeatedly denied the possibility.

This story was originally published August 13, 2025 at 10:38 AM.

Austin Horn

Lexington Herald-Leader

706-571-8597

Austin Horn is a politics reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He previously worked for the Frankfort State Journal and National Public Radio. Horn has roots in both Woodford and Martin Counties.