Mitch, Please!

How Mitch McConnell Sold Out Kentucky (and America, Too)

Matt Jones, Chris Tomlin

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781982164164
• eBook ISBN: 9781982142056
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller about how Mitch McConnell has been bad for Kentucky—and why he needs to be voted out of office from the founder of Kentucky Sports Radio and attorney Matt Jones.

They say all politics is local. In 2020, Mitch McConnell will have served five full terms as a US Senator. Thirty years. The Senate Majority leader’s power is as undeniable as it is infuriating, and the people of Kentucky have had enough. Led by Matt Jones, they (and they alone) have the power to oust him from office.

How did Jones, a local boy turned attorney turned sports radio host come to shine the brightest light on McConnell’s ineptitude? Simple—he knows Kentucky inside and out, and has used the state’s love of sports as an entry point for showcasing how McConnell has failed his fellow citizens both economically and socially for three decades.

Entertaining, maddening, yet ultimately inspiring, these stories from Kentuckians in each of its 120 counties illustrate the Senate Majority leader’s stunning shortcomings. “Jones employs a sharp, political scalpel eviscerating McConnell…[and this book is] an effective combination of description and vivisection” (Kirkus Reviews). Jones brings his trademark wit and wisdom throughout the book, while also offering a beautiful portrait of a state with arguably the most untapped potential in our country.

Ultimately, the white-hot hatred for McConnell on the coasts is just white noise. Only the people of Kentucky can remove him from office. Here, Matt Jones demonstrates he has the influence, charisma, and institutional knowledge to lead the charge. He and his fellow Kentuckians have had enough—and they’re ready for a fight.

CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Mitch

Hardin County

Mitch and the Hounds

When we began our 120-county tour on September 2, 2019, we wanted to visit Mitch McConnell’s birthplace, but, unfortunately for us, that sacred site is in Sheffield, Alabama. We thought about hitting Augusta, Georgia, the city where he was raised, but I have a policy against going there unless it’s the second weekend in April. Another option was the basement museum of the Mitch McConnell Center in Louisville (where you apparently can learn the most intimate details of the senator’s life), but it’s so depressing that children begin crying at its mere mention.

So, instead, we made our way to Elizabethtown, one of the most beautiful small towns in America (and the titular site of director Cameron Crowe’s worst movie). Elizabethtown is the county seat of Hardin County, accessible by State Route 86, winding north from Breckenridge County through Garfield and ending just before Cecilia. The elementary school in E-town (as the locals call it) is nearly as big as the town. Churches dot the landscape around every bend, and a fertilizer store’s reader board announces terrifyingly, “IT’S TIME TO CREEP FEED”^I in blocky, black capital letters.

Our goal was to find the home of Walter “Dee” Huddleston, a man you may have never heard of, but who has had a profound impact on this country. Huddleston was the Democratic senator of Kentucky from 1973 until 1985. His legislative career was fairly mundane, and finding noteworthy accomplishments of his twelve years in office is, unfortunately, difficult. In fact, Huddleston is best known not for what he did in office but rather for how he was booted from it. Yes, he was the person whose loss gave us Senator Mitch McConnell.

Huddleston was a tank gunner in the US Army during World War II. After returning from Europe, he set up shop as a sports radio broadcaster down the road in Bowling Green. After a few years, he was promoted to general manager in E-town and eventually became involved in local politics. Elected as a state senator in 1965, Huddleston found himself a successful legislator, later running for and winning a US Senate seat in 1972. In 1984 he ran for a third term against fellow Democrat (and beloved former governor) John Y. Brown Jr. and a Republican upstart county judge-executive from Louisville named Mitch McConnell. Huddleston took the Democrat far more seriously, as Brown already had household name status, but he breathed easier when Brown withdrew his candidacy due to illness.^II Most political observers believed the incumbent was certain to win reelection. McConnell didn’t look or act the part of a Kentucky politician. Most believed Huddleston would make short work of him.

Huddleston thought little of the quiet, awkward forty-two-year-old local official seeking to upset him. He did little campaigning and spent not even $1 million on the campaign—a very small amount even for the time. He assumed the entire state would see McConnell for what he was: a second-rate local politician whose biggest claim to fame was knowing a former US senator from Kentucky, John Sherman Cooper.

However, Mitch saw an opportunity. At a time when Kentucky politics was a more genteel pursuit, he decided to go hard at his opponent from the outset. In May 1984 McConnell announced a series of weekly press conferences he called “Dope on Dee,” at which he’d attack his opponent’s record, specifically his propensity for taking money for speeches and missing votes.^III The strategy was the brainchild of a McConnell political consultant by the name of Roger Ailes. (Yes, that Roger Ailes.) The rise of Ailes coincided with the rise of McConnell, and his suggestion to create an ad campaign taking on Huddleston’s voting record led to one of the most effective television attack ads in political history.

Ailes’s bloodhound spot was simple: a plaid-flanneled hunter with a pack of leashed hound dogs searches everywhere for Huddleston, who’d been alleged to have been absent from key Senate votes. The dogs drag the frustrated hunter from the front lawn of the US Capitol Building, through the fields of Kentucky, and eventually through Los Angeles and Puerto Rico—two places where the senator was said to have visited when he should have been casting votes. It was theatrical. It was over the top. It was ridiculous. It was questionably truthful at best.

It worked like a charm.

Kentuckians took notice and began asking questions about their senator. Huddleston grew concerned. He began campaigning harder against McConnell in October, but the damage had been done. Huddleston’s name was mud.^IV By the time President Ronald Reagan endorsed McConnell in an ad just before the election, Kentuckians had already made up their minds. McConnell took the 1984 Senate election by around five thousand votes—an upset that many still cite as the moment the tide turned from Democratic to Republican in the state of Kentucky. Ailes took credit for the upset for years to come, cementing his status as a conservative political kingmaker.

In the years following the loss, Huddleston admitted privately that he hadn’t taken McConnell seriously; that he never even saw him coming. And how could he have known that the political neophyte from Jefferson County would go so . . . so . . . dirty? The five thousand votes Huddleston took for granted fueled the rise of the most destructive figure in modern American politics.

In an age where public service has become too often the play toy of the insanely wealthy, Huddleston’s old house on Seminole Lane is notable today for its normalcy. The two-toned, brick building looks like any number of homes of the era, sitting in the middle of a quiet middle-class neighborhood, the average product of the subdivision boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its paint is currently chipped and the outside slightly worn, but in its prime, it would have represented the middle-class American dream. Nothing about it screams US senator. It is the gateway to a time in the not too distant past when politicians weren’t a distinct class from average citizens.

As I stand in front of Huddleston’s former Elizabethtown home and consider the damage that has occurred to America because one sports radio host got a little too cocky about his bespectacled challenger, I can’t help but think about the symmetry of the moment. If one sports radio host’s mistaken campaign strategy gave the world Mitch McConnell, what if another’s decision thirty-six years later could correct it? Only this time, the underdog is not the villain. It has all the makings of an inspirational movie.^V

These delusions of grandeur were interrupted by a slam of the door to the house directly to the left. There, the result of McConnell’s and Ailes’s hound dogs becomes crystal clear. A man walks from his house, smoking a cigarette, and stands beneath a massive, garish flag bearing the eloquent words “Trump 2020: No More Bullshit.” He barks with disdain in our direction, “Can I help you boys?”

We wave, shake our heads, and walk back to the car. Probably time to hit the road.

Grayson County

Guns and Babies

In order to understand Kentucky, you need to realize that we define ourselves by two things: (1) the region of the state we are from and (2) our particular county. This is especially true in rural Kentucky. If you ask people here where they are from, the vast majority will tell you their county rather than their hometown. This phenomenon, unique to Kentucky, is one of the reasons we have so many counties for a state our size.

For example, Leitchfield is the county seat of Grayson County, but most everyone there will simply say they are from Grayson County. And that means they are from one of the world’s greatest suppliers of beekeeping equipment. If you are like me, you probably know nothing about the practice of beekeeping, but if you want to learn, Clarkson, Kentucky, is where you should go.

It is the home of Kelley Beekeeping, where beekeepers from all over the continental United States come to restock on equipment. It’s very bright, clean, and sterile; it feels like a beekeeping Walgreens. Here you can stock up on all the Bee-Pro (high-protein pollen supplements) and Honey B Healthy (feeding stimulants) you could ever want. An employee explains to me that beekeeping is rapidly on the rise,^VI and that Kelley Beekeeping’s eighty-two-thousand-square-foot facility has been in Grayson County since 1952. It’s not the type of industry you would ever envision running across in the quiet, small county.

We walked into Kelley Beekeeping and had our first taste of a lesson we learned repeatedly on this trip. Most people are very hesitant to talk about politics in public. That hesitancy grows even greater when the topic is Kentucky’s senior senator. Time and time again, when we asked people “What do you think about Mitch McConnell?” their first reaction was to jerk their head around and see who might be looking. It was as if citizens in Kentucky naturally believed that Mitch or his cronies were waiting around the corner to potentially take them to Guantánamo for daring to speak a word against him.^VII In Kelley Beekeeping, the employees and customers were glad to tell us about all the latest products for your home apiary (that’s fancy talk for where beehives are kept), but mentioning Mitch led to nervous smiles and a quick change of subject.

We left and drove through Grayson County, passing some amazing local business names. Our favorites:

1. 5. Smokin Rednecks (barbeque)
2. 4. Priority Hair (salon)
3. 3. Whoop-De-Do Design (women’s clothing, accessories)
4. 2. Caught Ya Lookin’ (handbags, gifts)
5. 1. Farmer’s Feed Mill (restaurant)

Because I like to eat—and my hair already looks great—we stopped at Farmer’s Feed Mill. It was lunch hour, so the place was extra crowded, meaning it’s good. Farmer’s is the kind of restaurant where customers call dinner “supper” and framed copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence hang on the wall. The chalkboard out front lists the daily specials as meatloaf and “coonhunters’ cake.”

Here I met Becky and Harold Miller of Leitchfield. Becky is a retired assistant principal; Harold, a Leitchfield city councilman and manager at a nearby electric co-op. Together they are the quintessential southern couple of a certain age, friendly and welcoming, the embodiment of the best stereotypes of Kentuckians. As we sit, Harold runs his fingers over his moustache, and laughing friends come over for a quick handshake just to say hello. Becky spots a former student who drops by to catch up. He’s just inherited his grandfather’s piano, and they chat about how tough it is to move a piano. As he smiles and leaves, Becky leans in to tell me what a gifted musician he is.

Life is easy for the Millers in Leitchfield because they’re good people in a town that appreciates them. However, one thing sets them apart from most of their fellow Feed Mill patrons. They are Democrats in a very Republican county, a facet of life that can occasionally make things difficult. “We may not be the buckle of the Bible Belt, but we’re pretty close,” Harold says.

Becky shakes her head and notes there are more registered Democrats in the county than Republicans, but in elections it goes Republican nearly every time. They fear that despite a current governor, Matt Bevin, who has been unpopular on issues concerning teachers, the upcoming governor’s race will see her county vote Republican once again. “The problem is that no matter what the issues are we can agree on, there are single-issue voters,” she tells me. “Guns and babies.”

Guns and babies. It’s a refrain I have heard for years all across the state, and Mitch McConnell seizes on both in every campaign. Babies, of course, means abortion. For many in Kentucky, the issue of abortion isn’t just an important issue, it’s the only issue. They see the desire to protect the life of the unborn as the primary litmus test that every elected official must pass. You can agree with them on every issue ranging from health care, to unions, to education. But if you are pro-choice, for some that is a level too far.

On the issue of guns, rural America’s support is even more unanimous. While some citizens may acknowledge that women should have some say regarding their own bodies, taking away guns is akin to removing a way of life. In rural Kentucky, guns aren’t seen as a problem to be solved, but rather a connection to local culture. Guns represent families across the state spending time together hunting deer, memories that span generations. Guns also provide a means of protection for people that may live hundreds of yards away from the nearest neighbor, and the idea of removing them is seen as an attack on their family’s safety. Owning guns in Kentucky is simply something that everyone does, and the threat of losing them (which is of course manufactured and exploited by the Right for political gain) can easily sway a hunter to vote in the opposite direction.

While the Millers understand that these issues are critical to many in their county, they sometimes feel it blinds their friends to seeing the greater importance of other topics. While they’ve never had political disputes with those in their community, Becky does recall an encounter with a Republican door knocker that particularly riled her. “I explained that I was a Democrat, and he told me—can you believe this?—he told me he’d pray for me.”

She laughs. “I didn’t know what to say, so I just told him I’d pray for him too.^VIII I was so mad. I came in and told Harold, ‘Now I have to pray for him because I told him I was going to, but I can’t do it right now because I’m too upset.’ It just ran all over me because someone was trying to tell me what to believe.”

The Millers handle such differences with humor, because in a small town coexistence is a necessity, and at the end of the day these party line differences with their neighbors don’t calculate to radically different lives. Becky’s religious; Harold’s a hunter. In small towns like Leitchfield, the day-to-day differences between parties isn’t a demonizing fistfight, it’s a generally undetectable dissimilarity between two friendly city councilmen at a town meeting or two parents in the stands of a Grayson County football game. But when it’s time to vote, two hard-line issues remain immovable obstacles for Democratic candidates—and not just in Grayson County.

To understand Kentucky—heck, to understand rural America in general—you have to understand guns and babies.

Breckenridge County

“He Doesn’t Even Know Who I Am to Look at Me”

Driving into Breckenridge County, it would be easy to miss Jim Bob Mattingly Road. It looks more like a driveway, but in this neck of the woods, most roads look like driveways. I am not familiar with Jim Bob Mattingly except to note that he must have been important enough to have an official roadway named after him on the way into Hardinsburg, the county’s largest town. In most other parts of America, the name Jim Bob might sound strange. In Kentucky, I know three of them.

Breckenridge County is a peaceful place where, if you stay for more than an hour, someone will remind you that they won the state basketball championship in 1995, led by not one but two ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Note on Interviews
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Rise of Mitch
• Chapter Two: The Western Front
• Chapter Three: Suburbia
• Chapter Four: Coal Country
• Chapter Five: Mitch’s Base
• Chapter Six: Returning Home
• Chapter Seven: “We Never Existed”
• Chapter Eight: Moscow Mitch
• Chapter Nine: God, Guns & Babies
• Chapter Ten: The Decision
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright