Democratic Senate candidate Amy McGrath spent a lot of time trashing the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend limitless amounts of money on our elections when she was running for Congress two years ago.
“Citizens United was one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in modern history,” the McGrath campaign website said in 2018.
Fast forward to today as McGrath rakes in big bucks for the 2020 Senate race against Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the mastermind of modern money in politics.
McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot, is still critical of “unlimited corporate donations” on her Senate site. This time, however, she says only that the country must “work to end Citizens United” with no specific way how.
The old website also had a detailed issues page outlining very specific support for four bills to curtail cash in U.S. elections. The Senate page is scrubbed of that too.
This comes as the news dropped Tuesday that McGrath will be assisted by a new super PAC, dubbed Fire Mitch Save America, being run by Gov. Andy Beshear’s former campaign manager and other alumni.
“We’ve got to fight fire with fire,” McGrath campaign manager Mark Nickolas told The Lexington Herald Leader, when asked about potential charges of hypocrisy. “We have to defeat him at the game he created. We’re not going to run this race with one arm tied behind our back.”
Big money in politics is a Democratic divide, as many on the left condemn candidates who don’t reject super PACs entirely. Others try their best to steer clear of being seen as too cozy with large donors.
Democratic Senate candidate Mike Broihier, also a retired Marine, is among McGrath’s primary opponents. He said seeking money from people who are interested in donating beyond the legal limit is a “stunningly anti-Democratic sentiment” for her to embrace.
“Doubling or tripling the amount of money raised by a candidate that has failed to gain traction in the commonwealth will do nothing to enthuse the people who matter — the voters of Kentucky,” Broihier said in an interview.
The Lincoln County asparagus farmer also took issue with Beshear’s people thinking a super PAC is what will impress Kentuckians and help Democrats repeat what they did to former Gov. Matt Bevin in 2019.
“To assume that it was money, and only money, that drove Beshear’s win is to deny the impact of the furious work by grassroots organizers, door knockers, phone bankers and postcard writers that even a rookie political aspirant like me can see,” Broihier said.
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Written by Phillip M. Bailey. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.