Amy McGrath won Kentucky's Democratic primary for US Senate to face Mitch McConnell in November
- Amy McGrath won the Democratic primary to face GOP Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
- McGrath, a former fighter pilot and 2018 House candidate backed by the US Senate Democrats' campaign arm, defeated Kentucky State Representative Charles Booker.
The stakes:
Sen. Minority Leader and the Democratic Senate Democrats' campaign arm recruited Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who ran for US House in Kentucky's 6th congressional district in 2018, to run for US Senate against GOP Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last summer.
McGrath faced a few stumbles in launching her campaign, including flip-flopping on whether she would have voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and trying to position herself as a pro-Trump Democrat.
But her eye-catching ads and national Democrats' widespread dislike of McConnell made her one of the top fundraisers of the cycle, bringing in a stunning $41 million so far with $19 million in cash-on-hand, according to the most recent campaign finance filings.
Despite having millions in the bank, McGrath faced an increasingly tough race against 35-year-old State Representative Charles Booker, the youngest Black member of the Kentucky legislature, who is running on a far more progressive policy platform.
Booker's profile and stature in the race dramatically rose in the wake of his activism and leadership on racism and police violence over the past month, especially after the death of Louisville resident Breona Taylor, a Black woman and EMT who was killed by police during a no-knock raid in her home.
Booker, who was tear-gassed at a protest and led a group of demonstrators, has raised nearly $3 million in the past month alone and seen his social media following explode, The New York Times reported.
He also earned the endorsements of Kentucky's two largest newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and Lexington Herald-Leader, and has been endorsed by prominent national figures including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, and powerful Kentucky politicians including former Kentucky House Speaker and Attorney General Greg Stumbo, and former Secretary of State Alison Lungdergan Grimes.
McGrath, however, is unlikely to defeat McConnell, who has held his US Senate seat since 1984.
McConnell defeated Alison Lundergan Grimes, the 2014 Democratic nominee, by 16 percentage points six years ago, and Trump carried the state by a nearly 30-point margin in the 2016 election.