Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has compiled a short list of successors in his home state of Kentucky, preparing for the possibility that he does not serve out his full term, Kentucky Republicans tell The Intercept.
The list is topped by his protégé, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and also includes former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft, whose billionaire coal magnate husband is a major McConnell donor, as well as Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a former McConnell Scholar.
Under current law, the power to appoint McConnell’s replacement falls to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. But new legislation McConnell is pushing in the Kentucky General Assembly would strip the governor of that power and put it into the hands of the state GOP.
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McConnell’s denunciation of former President Donald Trump — even as it was accompanied by a vote of acquittal and a pledge to endorse the former president in 2024 if he is the GOP nominee — has brought on calls for his censure by party leaders across the state. A candidate running in McConnell’s mold would face an uphill climb through a primary in the new Republican Party — unless, that is, the candidate has the benefit of incumbency.
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If the bill becomes law, the appointment to fill a vacancy will be selected from a list of three names submitted by the state executive committee of the same political party as the senator who held the vacant seat.
The Intercept
It's possible that Mitch is planning on stepping down before he faces the possibility of being primaried by the new Trumpublican Party. He has to know Trump is out to get him for his speech after the second impeachment excoriating Trump. Mitch does nothing that isn't precisely calculated, so I have to believe the speech was meant to put him on the right side of history after he leaves Congress. But the backlash may exceed even what he was expecting, and to avoid the ignominy of censure, he promised loyalty to Trump should he run for the presidency in 2024. (Personally, I don't think Trump will. I think he'll just threaten it to keep his hold on the party.)
According to the bill, the appointee from that list will then serve until a successor has been elected by voters. The legislation goes on to list instructions on when elections take place in the event of a vacancy.
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Multiple sources say it is McConnell who is pushing this bill, but the claimed reasons for why he is pushing the legislation vary from health concerns to the makeup of the upper chamber.
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Other Republicans in the Kentucky Legislature, who asked not to be identified over fear of reprisal from their party, see this move as less about McConnell’s health and more about hand-selecting his replacement and giving that successor the benefit of incumbency. One frustrated Republican elected official, who declined to be named for the same reason, referred to the bill as McConnell’s “escape hatch.”
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Others close to McConnell say he is backing the bill because of the razor-thin margins in the U.S. Senate. For those Republicans, McConnell is seeking to protect the upper chamber from adding an additional Democrat. McConnell’s health has been a concern since boyhood. In 1944, he contracted polio and with his mother’s persistence, the young McConnell recovered and learned to walk again. In 2003, McConnell underwent a triple bypass heart surgery. In late October 2020, McConnell dismissed concerns over his health after appearing with bruised and bandaged hands days before his reelection. The previous year, the Kentucky Republican spent weeks recuperating after a fall which forced him to have surgery for a shoulder injury.
You can't kill Satan's spawn.
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