Robert “Mike” Duncan, the chairman of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) board of governors, has been a busy guy what with helping Donald Trump and Louis DeJoy destroy the Postal Service and—this is real—being a director of Sen. Mitch McConnell's $130 million super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund. He is also a director of American Crossroads Super PAC, which spent $1.9 million backing Trump this cycle. So that's nice for all of them.
Duncan is a "good friend" and "valued partner" of McConnell, in McConnell's own words. McConnell in fact recommended Duncan for the USPS post, and introduced him at his 2018 confirmation hearing. "I’ve known Mike for a very long time. I’m glad that President Trump has nominated such an intelligent, able and experienced individual to once again serve our country," McConnell said then. "As a businessman, a public servant and a dedicated mentor to young people, Mike is an outstanding choice to help oversee the world’s largest postal organization." Oversee, dismantle. Potato, pahtahto. McConnell, don't forget, had engineered this position for Duncan by blocking President Barack Obama's board of governor nominees.
McConnell and Duncan go way back in Kentucky, which has been helpful to both. Duncan served as general counsel and then chair of the Republican National Committee from 2002 to 2009. You might remember those years for the emergence of overt and creative voter suppression schemes under Bush and Cheney. Duncan is also Kentucky's Republican national committeeman on the Republican National Convention. He and McConnell are such good friends that McConnell got Duncan's kid, Robert Duncan Jr., a job as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
McConnell has been blocking $25 billion in USPS emergency funding, passed by the House in their HEROES Act in May, for 106 days. McConnell does not want the Postal Service to function. He has helped Trump load the board of governors with Trump supporters and Republican operatives, where they are in a very good position to use the USPS for their own ends: suppressing Democratic votes.
The USPS has warned 46 states that their elections are in jeopardy because all the sabotage DeJoy and Duncan have wrought on the service means they might not be able to handle all the ballots in what will likely be a heavily absentee vote because of pandemic. States are suing and House Democrats are exerting what pressure they can on DeJoy to restore the functions of the USPS.
All the bad press about missing prescriptions and lost Social Security checks and dead animals combined with the lawsuits and the congressional hearings have yet to make a dent in DeJoy, and presumably his overseers on Trump and McConnell's board of governors.
