A Sign Of Defeat? Mitch McConnell Forced To Loan His Reelection Campaign $1.8 Million

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was forced to personally loan his sputtering reelection campaign $1.8 million. Needless to say, candidates with lots of supporters don’t have to loan themselves money.

The Hill reported,

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is giving his reelection campaign a $1.8 million personal loan to stave off a new round of attack ads from Democrats.

…

“Sen. McConnell has maintained a longstanding personal commitment to his members that he won’t draw any resources from the team. So he’s going to match Obama’s money men out of his own pocket,” said John Ashbrook, McConnell’s spokesman.

What McConnell’s spokesman was really saying in the quote above was they couldn’t afford to match the ads with campaign funds, or they wouldn’t have had enough money to get out the vote.

It was little more than a week ago when the media was claiming that Democrats had pulled their ads and were pulling out of the Kentucky Senate race. The report was a bit of Republican propaganda and wishful thinking that the media happily ran with.

Democrats never left Kentucky, and the pressure that they are putting on Sen. McConnell is forcing him to spend his own money in an attempt to save his seat.

The fact that Mitch McConnell has voted seventeen times against raising the minimum wage, but has the ability to reach into his own bank account and spend nearly two million dollars without blinking an eye, makes his opponent’s argument for her that McConnell is rich and out of touch with the needs of hard working Kentuckians.

Successful candidates who have lots of small individual donors don’t have to write themselves a check to match their opponents’ spending. McConnell is paying people to show up at his rallies. He couldn’t find enough Kentucky women to star in new ad for his campaign, and now he loaned his own campaign personal cash.

The media are still assuming that Mitch McConnell is going to win, but his campaign resembles that of loser.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association