Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell won his primary campaign against tea partier Matt Bevin in May, but even though there wasn't any drama on election day about who would win, Bevin still did manage to pull about one-third of the vote—a substantial, if inadequate, showing.
Despite McConnell's calls for GOP unity in the aftermath of his victory, he almost immediately turned around and aggressively raised money for Mississippi incumbent Thad Cochran in his race against tea party favorite Chris McDaniel, a move many Kentucky tea partiers saw as divisive. And now McConnell is facing backlash for his decision, raising the question of whether tea partiers will stay home or vote libertarian instead of backing McConnell in November.
After serving on the Daviess County Republican Party's leadership team for almost three years, Owensboro native Barbara Knott had enough.
She resigned on July 10 and the reason was simple; Knott cannot support Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell this fall.
"I have resigned from the executive committee of the Republican Party because I will not support Mitch McConnell," Knott, chair of the Owensboro Tea Party, said in a telephone interview. "I have a big 4x8 sign in my front yard that says ‘Retire Mitch.’ It’s going to stay there through the election. I will not vote for that man."
According to the chair of the Daviess County Republican Party, she is not alone:
"Probably more than half of the executive committee feels like Barbara Knott does. It’s about 50-50, so my job as chair is to try to bring both together. I'm not sure if Daviess County will go for McConnell or not."
And a spokesman for a statewide tea party organization said:
"We're going to see a lot of our folks either not vote for senator, they'll vote for the down ticket races. They may go for the libertarian, but I don't see them voting for McConnell or for Grimes."
We're still a little more than three months away from the election, so we really can't say for sure how things will turn out. And while McConnell does lead the
polling average, the most accurate pollster to have surveyed Kentucky recently—Public Policy Polling—continues to show Grimes with a lead. Regardless of who is ahead, the race is extremely close. If it stays that way, if even a handful of tea partiers stay home or vote for Libertarian candidate David Patterson, McConnell's pursuit of a sixth term in the U.S. Senate could be in big trouble.