FILE – Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks during a Senate Committee on Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) In 1984, a young Kentucky county judge named Mitch McConnell defeated incumbent U.S. senator, Walter Dee Huddleston.
One key to McConnell’s win over Huddleston by less than a percentage point was a television commercial featuring bloodhounds searching for Huddleston. The ad noted that Huddleston was “missing big votes on Social Security, the budget, defense and even agriculture.”
Now McConnell is facing serious questions about his voting record.
At age 84, McConnell has not placed a vote on any legislation since June 11, a period of over a month and a half. It may grow with the Senate’s month-long August vacation.
Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, is asking the senator to let his constituents know why their senator is not at work, an absence that began when an ambulance took him to the hospital on June 14.
Beshear is now calling for McConnell to record a political ad, a “a short video,” for Kentucky voters as evidence that he is functional and end “rampant speculation.”
This is a classic case of the old cliché – “What Goes Around, Comes Around.”
“When you’ve been in a hospital for a month and you’ve missed all the votes, which is your job – I mean, basically…you owe your boss, like anybody else out there…an explanation of what’s been going on…,” he said.
Beshear claims two Kentucky officials have told him that McConnell is either near death or dead.
McConnell is not running for reelection, but the potential ad is key to an intense competition between the Democratic governor and the Republican majority legislature over who gets to replace McConnell.
McConnell has missed votes on critical issues and on potentially on important nominees to lead U.S. intelligence and the Justice Department.
At the time McConnell attacked Huddleston for missing votes, Huddleston was nonetheless present for 94 percent of U.S. Senate votes. The ad emphasized that he had missed votes on some critical issues of the day.
Adding to the speculation around McConnell’s condition is the recent and sudden death of a younger Republican senator. South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham died at age 71. His life was celebrated last week. McConnell was unable to attend.
If McConnell were just any backbencher his incapacity might not be a major topic. But he has served seven terms in the Senate, including time as the Senate’s Republican leader (majority and minority) and grand negotiator. No one in history has a longer tenure than McConnell as a leader and power player in the Senate.
He is celebrated by friends and foes as a tough political player. His obstruction tactics have shaped today’s Supreme Court and its six-member conservative majority that overturned constitutional protections for abortion rights. He managed to get a record number of conservative judges appointed to federal appeals courts.
He also is the political force that in 2010 led the high court to end limits on campaign contributions, setting off the explosive dominance of corporate and billionaire donations that have since shaped national politics.
The impact of his absence is amplified with the midterm elections approaching.
McConnell is one of the few Republican senators with the stature on Capitol Hill to stand up to 80-year-old President Trump.
Trump is dismissive of the current Republican majority leader in the Senate, John Thune (R-S.D.). He is pressuring Thune to end the filibuster rule and pass a controversial law limiting mail-in voting and raising the bar to register to vote beyond merely holding a driver’s license.
“Whether or not Mr. Trump truly believes that hordes of illegal voters are the only reason Republicans ever lose, it isn’t true,” The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial last week.
But Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has announced that the president is “running out,” of patience with Thune.
Another consequence of McConnell’s absence is the loss of his expertise in helping the Republican Senate majority preserve itself. The party’s Senate candidates are dealing with a president who has 61 percent disapproval, according to Fox polling.
Sixty-seven percent of voters rate the economy under Trump and the Republican Congress negatively. The voters are also negative on inflation and even the president’s handling of immigration.
Trump’s job approval is at a record low in recent polling from Fox News, and 53 percent of voters plan to back Democrats in House races in November as opposed to 46 percent who plan to back Republicans. Fifty-three percent is the highest level of suppor for either party in 30 years.
A frustrated House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last month uncharacteristically flared into profanity and snapped at his members.
“I’m sick of this s—,” he exploded to a room full of House Republicans who were apparently bickering with one another over the party’s failure to deliver meaningful legislation to improve housing, employment, and care for our nation’s veterans.
What kind of political advertising spin can help this flailing Republican Party?
Where have you gone, Mitch McConnell?
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.“
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