Democratic Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath’s campaign may have just made the dumbest mistake so far in what had already been a disastrous candidacy.
Her campaign manager, Mark Nickolas, claims he got potential Democratic primary rival and Kentucky television host Matt Jones fired from his evening sports and politics show, Hey, Kentucky, according to the Intercept.
The Intercept provides the details:
Mark Nickolas, McGrath’s campaign manager, has boasted in Kentucky political circles that he was responsible for Jones’s firing, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.
A McGrath campaign spokesman told the Louisville Courier-Journal Monday, “Despite an unnamed source’s claim, we had nothing to do with his firing.”
McGrath’s campaign launched in July to much fanfare from the press, including a laughable NBC News hit piece attempting to implicate McConnell for his great-great-great-grandparents‘ ownership of slaves. But then the Democratic candidate’s candidacy went off the rail almost immediately after she bombed a CNN interview, flip-flopped in the course of a single day on whether she would have voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and bailed at the last minute on an MSNBC interview.
The rollout was so bad that Jones suggested soon thereafter that he might challenge McGrath for the nomination. For this, he was suspended temporarily from his television show until he made up his mind about running. As of last week, however, that temporary suspension became permanent, and Nickolas has reportedly taken credit for it.
If true, this is an enormously stupid thing for two basic reasons.
First, the TV show was one of the main things holding Jones back from entering the Kentucky Democratic primary. Now he has no reason not to jump into the race. In fact, if it is true that McGrath’s team got his show canceled, he now has every reason to defeat her. As it turns out, people do not like having unemployment forced upon them.
Second, and this may be an even bigger problem for McGrath, if the Intercept report is to be believed, her campaign manager just personally saw to the cancellation of a sports show that was extremely popular in the sports-obsessed Bluegrass State. Good luck to McGrath as she explains to Kentuckians the supposed reasons for why her campaign manager got their favorite sports program canceled.
Lastly, if Jones jumps in, it means McGrath will have to navigate a primary that includes not only a popular sports host, but also healthcare professional Steve Cox, and retired Marine Lt. Colonel Mike Broihier.
And all of that before she even takes on Mitch McConnell directly.
