Retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath promises to take a COVID-19 test before her Monday debate with six-term Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell.
The Democrat expects her opponent to do likewise. “It’s about setting the example,” she said during an outdoor stop at a McGrath-for-Senate sign-bedecked Kiwanis Park in Mayfield, the Graves County seat.
She arrived wearing a camouflaged face mask and headed for a picnic pavilion. Before she took it off, she told the crowd of about 50 people — all wearing masks — to stand back and socially distance. “I want to make sure that everybody is safe,” she admonished.
A Naval Academy grad and the first woman Marine to fly in a jet in combat, McGrath spent 20 years in the Corps, where, she said, “you learn a lot about leadership. Nobody’s going to follow somebody who doesn’t set the example. If you want people to do something, to take it seriously, you’ve got to take it seriously yourself.”
Some of the faithful sported Biden-Harris face masks and tee-shirts. Others held up Biden-Harris yard signs. McGrath resisted punching at President Trump. If the polls are right, he’s still popular in Kentucky, especially in Mayfield and elsewhere in the Jackson Purchase, arguably the most conservative corner of the Bluegrass State.
Trump got the coronavirus after ostentatiously spurning masks and social distancing, belittling mask-wearing, and downplaying the danger of the virus that has claimed more than 211,000 lives. McGrath denounced the “recklessness of members of Congress who have been going around without masks” while refusing to take the pandemic seriously.
McGrath said she’s glad the president is recovering, adding “it’s awesome that he was able to go to Walter Reed, the national military medical center, to get the best medical attention in the country.” Even so, she pointed out that most people don’t have access to such top-flight health care.
As the virus continues to infect thousands every day, McGrath wants to help infected senior citizens, “the most vulnerable” to the disease, by lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 during the pandemic.
She praised the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. She said the landmark legislation reduced Graves County’s uninsured rate from 22 to 5 percent. McGrath wants to strengthen the ACA with a public option, which would give people a choice of enrolling in a private insurance or government plan.
McConnell, she pointed out, still wants to wipe out the ACA. Having failed to abolish it through legislation, he “is now trying to do it through the courts.”
On Nov. 10, the Supreme Court will hear a suit brought by the Trump administration and a group of GOP attorneys general to declare the ACA unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, Majority Leader McConnell is rushing a Senate vote on right-wing Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump and McConnell are counting on her to bolster the court’s five-member conservative majority, thus all but dooming the ACA.
“I don’t think any senators should be voting on a Supreme Court nominee right now,” McGrath said. “Voting [in the election] is already happening. … Let’s go by the McConnell rule.”
Four years ago, McConnell refused to allow even a hearing for Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to succeed Antonin Scalia because 2016 was an election year.
On other topics, McGrath:
- Blasted what she called McConnell’s hypocrisy on jobs. “Our senator wants to talk about jobs all the time, but the only jobs he cares about are CEOs’.”
- Supported boosting the minimum wage to $15 an hour and urged more good-paying union jobs, both of which McConnell opposes, she said. He “is always striking down policies that would help everyday people. We have to stop undermining unions which is something he has systemically done for the last two decades. Why? Because it is a race to the bottom – lower and lower wages so CEOs make more and more and more money. Even in this pandemic, it’s still going great for them.”
- Called for more racial and gender equality, more funding for public education, and for ending “the corruption in Washington. This is the system Mitch McConnell has built for himself – the revolving doors of lobbyists.” Taking an obvious swipe at Trump, she condemned a “tax code where if you are a millionaire or a billionaire you can go 10 years without paying taxes and the other five years you pay just 750 bucks.”
- Charged that McConnell is “owned by big pharma,” adding Kentucky has “some of the poorest counties in the country, yet we have one of the richest senators.”
- Maintained that McConnell lavishes big tax cuts on the rich and “protects the people and the entities that power his campaigns year after year after year.”
Photo gallery of the McGrath meet-and-greet in Mayfield
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