Mitch McConnell was first elected to represent Kentucky in the United States Senate the year I was born. For my entire life, one man has been one of my state's two voices in the Senate. And in just a few weeks, Kentuckians will go to the polls and choose his successor. The choice could not be clearer. Will they send Senator McConnell’s apprentice, and my opponent, Andy Barr, to perpetuate a status quo that has left Kentucky one of the poorest and sickest states in the nation, or will they send a leader to the upper chamber who will always put his state first?
Recent events have made it clear that this is a moment for leadership that shows up, never backs down and puts Kentucky first every single day.
Earlier this year, Senator McConnell was absent for more than 90 days, leaving Kentuckians without adequate representation at a critical moment for our state and nation. As we grappled with new rounds of tariffs further straining Kentuckians’ wallets, the war with Iran sent the cost of gasoline, diesel and fertilizer skyrocketing. The bills mounted. So did the shortages. Kentuckians were left wondering who in Washington could help during this most trying time.
And McConnell wasn’t there.
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Barr has been in Congress for 14 years. In that time, he’s become nothing more than a rubber stamp for the policies that have left Kentuckians further behind, all while his own net worth has skyrocketed.
Barr has said he fully supports President Donald Trump’s tariffs that have significantly worsened the affordability crisis for Kentucky’s working people, small businesses and family farmers, and Barr has refused to rein in the president over his illogical and endless war with Iran. But none of that surprises me. Barr refuses to attend town halls, debate me more than once or have a real conversation about Kentucky’s future, and seems to spend most of his time in Washington, rooted in corruption more than in Kentucky.
Do we think Barr would be any more accountable to the people of Kentucky than McConnell? I have my doubts.
Kentuckians and Americans face a dire moment in our nation’s history, and McConnell and Barr's lack of leadership is stunning.
No matter your race, class, background or political affiliation, ask yourself, as Americans and Kentuckians alike, what has changed for you? What has gotten better? We know that things have only gotten worse. We know a change is needed.
As the McConnell era comes to a close, we can usher in a new era rooted in transparency, accountability, leadership and one that centers people over politics.
Believe it or not, there was a time when McConnell centered Kentucky and delivered for the Commonwealth. Kentucky's senior senator once wielded his power the old-fashioned way, bringing investments home and making Washington answer to his state. To the surprise of many, I have said I am running on pages from the McConnell playbook. Ferocious, unembarrassed advocacy for the people who sent you is what a senator is for, and Kentuckians remember when we had it.
But somewhere along the way, the playbook changed. Power stopped flowing home and started pooling in Washington, filling the swamp most of us are still trying to drain. Kentucky became a proving ground for a politics that rewarded insiders and asked ordinary people to accept decline as the new normal. Our rural hospitals closed. Our wages flattened. Our young people left. When Washington's tariff wars invited retaliation against American crops, Kentucky's family farms paid the bill: China quit buying our soybeans, and even after the emergency bailout checks, farm families lost money on every acre they harvested.
Barr is offering Kentucky that late-era playbook all over again, and we don't have to guess what it delivers because we are living it. The same script, a new understudy, at the very moment this country is demanding change.
If that sounds familiar in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Michigan, it should. Kentucky is a mirror. The workers, farmers, veterans, teachers, many rural communities and small business owners have watched the same movie for 30 years: opportunity shrinking while Washington grows more distant and less accountable. The kitchen table math of an ordinary life no longer adds up. The bills keep getting higher. A decent life feels further out of reach.
So, the question in Kentucky is not really who succeeds Mitch McConnell. It is whether American democracy can still deliver, and whether we can build a government worthy of the people it serves. That means transparency as a baseline, not a favor. It means treating rural broadband, hospitals and schools as national infrastructure. It means stopping the proliferation of AI data centers in our backyards, fighting to lower gas and grocery bills, and ensuring we can all have the same great health care McConnell has enjoyed. It is the unglamorous work of making government improve daily life, the only way to rebuild trust.
I came to these convictions not in a think tank but in the West End of Louisville, where I rationed insulin because my family could not always afford it. And I came to them in the hollers of Western and Eastern Kentucky, where I learned that the coal miner in Harlan County and the home health aide in Louisville have been handed the same raw deal by the same distant power.
We are not each other's enemies. The coalition I have spent years building includes Democrats, Republicans, independents and plenty of people who voted for Trump. They want a government that sees them, tells them the truth and delivers.
That is why the conventional map-reading fails here. Kentucky elected and reelected Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in the middle of the Trump era, not because the state changed colors, but because voters will cross any line for a leader they believe is on their side. Americans are not nearly as divided as our politics insists. Most of us are simply tired of being talked about instead of talked to, and tired of decline dressed up as destiny.
That’s why, as Kentucky’s next U.S. Senator, I will put common sense over corruption, people over politics, and rebuild our Commonwealth, our democracy, and our nation. It’s time for something different, because change can no longer wait for tomorrow. The McConnell era proved what concentrated power can do. The next era must prove what shared prosperity can do. That work will begin in places like Kentucky, with the people who were told their best days were behind them. I have never known a Kentucky without Mitch McConnell in the Senate. My children will grow up in one. And the country should watch, because as Kentucky goes, so goes the story America tells itself about whether democracy can still deliver.
Charles Booker is the Democratic nominee in Kentucky for the U.S. Senate. He is a former state representative and the founder of Hood to the Holler.