“This Is A Mess”

NYMag: Amy McGrath’s Senate Campaign “On A Collision Course With Failure”

“McGrath’s campaign is barely two months old, but it already looks and sounds as if it were designed by lonely wonks who can no longer recall the precise shape of human life”

“She’s besieged, still, by bad press largely of her own making”

“Her missteps might cost her a Senate race anywhere. But they are uniquely dangerous in Kentucky”

In case you missed it under New York Magazine‘s “Gaffes” section, an absolutely scathing new column details the steady stream of scandals dooming Amy McGrath and her disastrous Senate campaign.

Among the many McGrath missteps featured in the piece:

Amy McGrath Exploited Kentucky Coal Miners As Political Pawns

“The story is bad for McGrath”

NYMag: “Amy McGrath may have been a good fighter pilot, but the Kentucky Democrat’s Senate campaign is on a collision course with failure. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported on Thursday that two coal miners are suing her campaign for using their likenesses in an ad without their consent. In a cease-and-desist letter published by the Herald-Leader, an attorney claims that the men never agreed to appear in a campaign ad.”

• “The Herald-Leader‘s report seems to confirm a story that first surfaced days ago. On an episode of the Trillbilly Worker’s Party, a left-wing comedy podcast based in the Kentucky town of Whitesburg, co-host Tanya Turner described an unusual encounter with a pair of miners. According to Turner, the men showed up at Appalshop — the arts-and-education center where she works — to find out why the documentary they thought they’d filmed for the nonprofit had appeared in a McGrath campaign ad. One reportedly told Turner that a cameraman told him directly that the footage was for the nonprofit, which has produced documentaries in the past. When the film later appeared in the McGrath ad, they were irate.”

McGrath Has “Tripped Over Herself Repeatedly”

“Unfortunately for McGrath, the lawsuit also isn’t the first scandal her campaign has had to weather”

“…She’s tripped over herself repeatedly. ‘A lot of what has stood in the way of what Donald Trump promised is Senator McConnell,’ she told the New York Times in July. Days later, she said she would have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court…She later reversed that position after public pressure, as CNBC reported at the time.”

McGrath’s Campaign Helped Get A Potential Primary Opponent Fired

“This is a mess…She’s done little to help herself”

“An inauspicious start, to be certain — but McGrath could have righted herself, and she hasn’t. She’s besieged, still, by bad press largely of her own making. Matt Jones, a popular sports-media personality, who criticized her early missteps and may challenge her in the Democratic primary, says that her campaign manager got him fired from his television show. Sources told the Intercept in August that the aide, Mark Nickolas, had indeed ‘boasted’ of getting Jones fired”

Read the piece in its entirety here via New York Magazine

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