Amy McGrath for Senate

Amy McGrath attacks McConnell in viral video announcing her candidacy

She called McConnell the embodiment of everything wrong with Washington.


Claire Goforth


Published Jul 9, 2019   Updated May 20, 2021, 9:05 am CDT

Is Mitch McConnell a scourge on America?

This is the message of the viral video announcing the candidacy of retired Marine Lt. Colonel Amy McGrath, a Democrat challenging Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) for his seat in 2020.

The three-minute video called “The Letter” begins with McGrath talking about writing her senator when she was 13, explaining to him that she “wanted to fly fighter jets in combat, to fight for my country and that women should be able to do that.”

That senator, Mitch McConnell, never wrote back.

McGrath, who would go on to become the first female Marine to fly an F-18 in combat, explains that the unanswered letter stuck with her.

“I’ve often wondered: How many other people did Mitch McConnell not take the time to write back, or even think about?”

McGrath then addresses the state of American life and government.

After saying that “everything in Washington had to start someplace,” and wondering how the nation became so divisive that people can’t even talk about their elected leaders among their friends and family “without anger and blame,” she sets her sights on her opponent.

“It started with this man, who was elected a lifetime ago and who has bit-by-bit, year-by-year turned Washington into something we all despise, where dysfunction and chaos are political weapons, where budgets and healthcare and the Supreme Court are held hostage. A place where ideals go to die.”

“I’m running for Senate because it shouldn’t be like this.”

McConnell is infamous for his obstruction in the Senate and has been oft-criticized for refusing to schedule votes on even popular, bipartisan bills to appease the hardliners and donors in his caucus.

McGrath asserts that ousting McConnell will set America back on the right track.

“There is a path to resetting our country’s moral compass, where each of us is heard, and we can become once again, the moral and economic leader of a world in disarray. But to do that, we have to win this,” she says.

Already McConnell’s camp has released a video attacking McGrath as being a far-left liberal.

Within hours, McGrath’s campaign video had hundreds of thousands of views. “Amy McGrath” and “#DitchMitch” began trending on Twitter. Liberals who have long bemoaned the scorched-earth style of one of the longest-serving senators were jubilant.

As of this morning, McGrath’s campaign website contains the video, a donation button, and a few paragraphs reiterating some takeaways and additional biographical information about the candidate—mother of three, married to a retired Navy pilot who is a registered Republican.

It also includes this all-business campaign slogan: Anti-corruption, anti-obstruction, anti-B.S.



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*First Published: Jul 9, 2019, 10:10 am CDT