The Republican Race to Replace Mitch McConnell Has Turned Into a Fight Over His Legacy

Nate Morris, a Republican Senate candidate from Kentucky, started his speech the way he usually did: bashing Mitch McConnell.

At a local GOP dinner in August, Morris denounced the state’s senior senator as he did on the campaign trail, arguing that the Kentucky GOP needed a fresh break from McConnell’s style of old-guard conservative politics.

But that night, at least one member of the audience had heard enough.

“I interrupted him,” said Frank Amaro, a local Republican official. “And I said, ‘I hope you understand, Mitch is not running. Now what are you going to do for us?’ I think that’s more important than talking about Mitch McConnell like that.”

Amaro, who said his remarks startled Morris, knows why the candidate would distance himself from McConnell, whose occasional anti-Trump stances have alienated many of the president’s supporters. But, Amaro said, Kentucky candidates still need to walk a fine line between running as a fresh start and bashing a man who has represented the state in the Senate since 1985.

“I believe that as time goes on, it’s going to smack them in the face,” said Amaro, who is the GOP’s vice chair of the 1st Congressional District. “All of them are going to go, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to fill that guy’s shoes?’”

Amaro isn’t the only Kentucky Republican official who’s felt compelled to speak up on behalf of McConnell this year.

The Republican primary to replace McConnell — a contest between the businessman Morris, Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — has transformed into a public debate over the longtime senator’s legacy, as the candidates grapple with a politician considered the godfather of Kentucky’s Republican party but whose worldview has become increasingly out of step with the Trumpified version of the GOP.

That dynamic was reinforced this week, after McConnell expressed his strong disapproval of a Trump-backed peace proposal for Russia and Ukraine. His opposition in turn led to a rebuke from Vice President JD Vance, who asked if the trio of Republicans hoping to replace the McConnell shared the senator’s view on the proposal.

Some of the candidates, but especially Morris, have sought to portray themselves as a different kind of politician more willing to embrace President Donald Trump.

But those attacks have also increasingly drawn pushback from some McConnell loyalists, a loose consortium of whom have taken it upon themselves to defend the senator’s legacy and let his would-be successors know when their criticism crosses a line.

“It bothers me, and I think there are a lot of people like me, who see this meanness [toward McConnell] or this distancing for purely political purposes, this stepping on the guy as he’s heading out the door, and some of the rank opportunism that shows,” said Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state. “I don’t like it. I personally don’t like it.”

The pushback is a testament to the fact that, even a decade into Trump’s control of the GOP, some factions of the party remain loyal to an older version of Republican principles embodied by McConnell. But even some of the people leading the McConnell defense are cognizant that in the modern GOP, their efforts might fall on deaf ears.

“Maybe I’m in the minority,” Grayson added. “And I’ll find out in May that I am.”

The McConnell defenders have focused on Morris, who from Day 1 of his campaign has been making it clear that he’s no fan of McConnell.

He launched with a video framed around “taking out the trash,” featuring a cardboard cutout of McConnell and McConnell paraphernalia being dumped in a garbage can, and calling out Cameron and Barr for their ties to the senator. At an early campaign event, Morris called McConnell “the nastiest politician in the history of America.” At an August political event, he said it outright: “I’m gonna trash Mitch McConnell’s legacy.” He continued on, criticizing the senator’s age and medical condition.

“Who here can honestly tell me that it’s a good thing to have a senior citizen who freezes on national television during his press conferences as our U.S. senator?” Morris said.

For Morris’ team, it’s a no-brainer approach. A Morris campaign strategist told NOTUS that, in his view, Kentucky voters are so tired of McConnell that Morris’ rhetoric will win the favor of Trump-loving Republicans who want a new approach.

“We’re making a point that these other guys represent Mitch McConnell and his politics,” the Morris strategist said. “And Kentucky can go that direction, or they can go the direction of MAGA.”

There is a small proportion of voters who are still loyal to McConnell, this strategist said. But they’re not critical to a primary win for Morris.

“There’s about 20% to 25% of Republicans who have a favorable opinion of McConnell,” he said. “So if we alienate those people, great. That’s part of the entire strategy, like we are knowingly polarizing the electorate.”

Conor McGuinness, a spokesperson for Morris, said in a statement that Barr and Cameron have both taken recent stances siding with McConnell, or refused to weigh in on certain issues, like the filibuster, when Morris has.

“The dividing line in this race is very straightforward: It’s MAGA versus Mitch McConnell,” McGuinness said. “And Nate Morris is the only candidate with the courage of his convictions to say 100% unequivocally that he stands with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.”

Cameron and Barr have been more circumspect with their approach to McConnell, opting not to publicly lambaste him. Their careful approach has led to criticism from some Trump-supporting conservatives.

But the two candidates have also found ways to separate themselves from McConnell, staking out policy positions on trade and foreign affairs more aligned with Trump than the senator. And when McConnell voted against confirming Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, Cameron blasted the decision, calling it “flat out wrong.”

But Morris’ anti-McConnell strategy is especially frustrating to some Kentucky Republicans, some of whom point out that Morris started his political career as an intern in the senator’s office. The over-the-top rhetoric is rooted in political opportunism and not genuine belief, they say, and is angering many McConnell supporters who have already decided they’ll vote for either of the two alternatives before ever voting for him.

“I’m already seeing more folks saying, ‘Well, maybe I haven’t made up my mind in the Senate race, but Nate Morris is not my guy,’” said Iris Wilbur Glick, who was political director for McConnell during his 2014 reelection campaign.

Glick and other Republicans interviewed for this story praised McConnell’s decades-long effort to turn Kentucky from a blue state to a red one and touted his ability, as Senate GOP leader, to deliver major federal funding to the state.

Republicans who promise to tear down McConnell’s legacy, she said, need to explain what that would mean for the state’s business and agriculture communities.

“When you say ‘tearing down that legacy,’ that’s personal to a lot of us,” she said. “Say you’re going to tear that down, what do you mean by that?”

Other Kentucky Republicans say the decision to bash McConnell’s legacy so vocally is a surprising choice that might come back to bite the Morris campaign. Voters, while they see McConnell’s time as over, don’t despise him, a strategist involved in the race told NOTUS.

“He’s like an aging sports star that hasn’t retired yet,” the strategist said of McConnell. “You remember the great days, and now you’re sort of done with it, right? Like, it would be great if this guy retired, because then we can bring in fresh blood, that sort of thing. It’s not hate.”

Grayson has seen how Republican voters’ views of McConnell have shifted: When Grayson ran for Senate in 2010, his campaign’s final TV ad in a primary featured a direct plea from McConnell asking voters to back Grayson, who was banking on the senator’s popularity with voters to help get him over the finish line. (It didn’t work, with Grayson losing to Rand Paul.)

Grayson is confident there’s at least a group of voters who remain supportive of McConnell, and another group of voters who might be ready for a change in leadership but will still recoil at any personal attacks. He said, however, that even if those two voter blocs were combined, he’s not certain they’re large enough to be a majority.

“The question is, in today’s politics, is there such a thing as too mean?” Grayson said. “Where is the line for too mean? I think that line has shifted, so we’re going to find out.”

Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie told NOTUS that, in his view, a “majority of Kentuckians understand what Mitch McConnell has meant to Kentucky.” Guthrie recalled earlier days when he ran for state Senate and later for the House, when McConnell took an interest in his campaign, believed he could win and supported him with advice and appearances at fundraisers.

Many Republicans in Kentucky have since been drawn into the folds of the party by Trump, and now the state is reliably red and Trumpy. But it was not always thus, Guthrie said, and McConnell was influential in building the state party to what it is now.

“I don’t know if they saw the days when you go to a Republican meeting and there would be eight people there, and now they’re full,” Guthrie said of the state’s Republican converts. “And so, I mean, he really was the architect of that, and I think he needs to be recognized for that.”