Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is known in Congress for being a merciless politico. His talent for dismantling his opponents a thing of legend.
But his campaign on Monday did something a little different: It released an ad that paints the Kentucky senator in a sympathetic light, giving voters in the Bluegrass State an intimate look at his “softer” side.
The TV spot focuses on the story of Noelle Hunter, a Kentucky woman whose daughter was kidnapped in 2011 by Hunter’s ex-husband and taken to Mali. The woman was able to get her daughter back thanks to McConnell intervening on her behalf.
“I didn’t know if [Muna] was alive or dead. I reached out to Sen. McConnell and he took up my cause personally. I can’t even talk about him without getting emotional. He cares,” Hunter said in the ad.
“He cared about me and my children when other people didn’t. He let it be known that this little Kentuckian needed to come home,” she added.
McConnell is battling Kentucky’s secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, for control of the Senate seat he currently holds. The Republican senator leads Grimes by 5.2 points, 47.2 percent to 42 percent, according to the latest polling data from RealClearPolitics.
The new McConnell ad is notable because, again, it is “a radical departure from that slash and burn strategy that has worked so well for McConnell in the past,” the Washington Post reported.
