McGrath wins, will face McConnell

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Former Marine pilot Amy McGrath overcame a bumpierthanexpected Kentucky primary to win the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Tuesday, fending off progressive Charles Booker to set up a bruising, bigspending showdown with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Voting ended June 23, but it took a week until McGrath could be declared the winner due to the race’s tight margins and a deluge of mailin ballots. The outcome seemed a certainty early in the campaign but became tenuous as Booker’s profile surged as the Black state lawmaker highlighted protests against the deaths of African Americans in encounters with police.

It was a narrow victory for McGrath. With 99% of precincts reporting Tuesday, she had an 11,832vote advantage over Booker out of nearly 531,000 votes cast. Several other candidates attracted tens of thousands of votes. McConnell, a key ally to President Trump, already breezed to victory in the GOP primary in his bid for a seventh term.

Kentucky switched to widespread absentee voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, and election officials needed days to count ballots. In Lexington, the state’s secondlargest city, about 6,000 absentee ballots were thrown out on technicalities ranging from unsigned envelopes to detached security flaps, said Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins.

Since last summer, McConnell and McGrath looked past their primaries to skirmish with each other, and now those attacks will intensify heading into the fall campaign.

Declaring victory, McGrath reached out to Booker’s supporters to try to unite the party for the challenge ahead against McConnell, who has dominated Kentucky’s political landscape for decades.

“The differences that separate Democrats are nothing compared to the chasm that exists between us and the politics and actions of Mitch McConnell,” McGrath said in a statement. “He’s destroyed our institutions for far too long.”

McGrath has raised prodigious amounts of campaign cash, capitalizing on the wrath national Democrats have for McConnell. It places her in a position to go toetotoe with the alwayswellfunded McConnell.

McGrath charted a more moderate course inside Democratic politics. She supports adding a public health insurance option as part of the Obamaera Affordable Care Act and supports expanded access to Medicare for people 55 and older.

She portrays McConnell as an overly partisan, Washington insider who exemplifies what’s wrong with national politics. She accuses McConnell of undermining labor unions, awarding tax cuts for the wealthy and cozying up to pharmaceutical companies.

McConnell accuses her of being too liberal for Kentucky on issues ranging from abortion to border security.