Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker (D) stands with a noose around his neck in a new campaign ad criticizing his opponent, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), for holding up legislation in 2020 that would have made lynching a federal hate crime in America, the Louisville Courier Journal reports.

“Almost exactly one year after his bid for U.S. Senate came up just short in the Democratic primary, Charles Booker formally launched his new candidacy for the office Thursday, this time hoping to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Rand Paul in 2022,” the Louisville Courier Journal reports.

Charles Booker (D) — who narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Kentucky in 2020 — announced in a video that he’s forming an exploratory committee to challenge Sen. Rand Paul (R) in 2022.

A new Mason-Dixon poll finds Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) with a 9-point lead over challenger Amy McGrath (R), 51% to 42%.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) writes to challenger Amy McGrath (D):

“I am challenging you to a socially distanced, Lincoln-Douglas style debate with a time-keeping moderator agreed upon by each of us. This would be a debate just between the two of us. No notes at the table, no props, and no audience.”

A new Morning Consult poll in Kentucky finds Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is crushing challenger Amy McGrath by 17 points, 53% to 36%.

A new Garin-Hart-Yang (D) poll in Kentucky finds Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) leading challenger Amy McGrath (D) in the U.S. Senate race, 45% to 41%.

In the presidential race, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden, 53% to 41%.

Former Marine Corps pilot Amy McGrath held off a surging Rep. Charles Booker Tuesday to win the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate in Kentucky a week after ballots were cast, setting up a big money showdown with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

A new Data for Progress/Civiqs poll in Kentucky finds Charles Booker (D) now leading Amy McGrath (D) in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 44% to 36%.

The winner of next week’s primary will face Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) in November.

Former Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker (D) in the Democratic primary to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) in November, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

“For most of the campaign, Amy McGrath (D) appeared to be gliding toward the Democratic nomination. She’s backed by the party’s national establishment and has raised prodigious amounts of campaign cash, enabling her to run TV ads since last year to build her statewide name recognition.”

“But Booker, a freshman state lawmaker from Louisville, has won a series of high-profile endorsements and started running TV ads late in the campaign.”

The Lincoln Project is out with a new ad targeting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who they say has mysteriously become a very rich man while in the U.S. Senate.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Kentucky finds that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) continues to be unpopular in the state, with only 41% of voters approving of the job he’s doing and 48% who disapprove.

Also striking: Just 69% of Republicans approve of the job he’s doing.

In a match up against a generic Democratic opponent, McConnell leads by just three points, 47% to 44%. By contrast, President Trump has a 16-point lead over Joe Biden in the state, 55% to 39%.

Nathan Gonzales: “He’s not running against a generic Democrat. Amy McGrath has already spent $15 million on the race and has real negatives. Not having a named ballot sticks out prominently.”

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Democratic opponent Amy McGrath outraised the longtime senator in the first quarter of 2020 as Kentucky’s Senate race emerges as one of the most expensive battles of the election cycle,” The Hill reports.

“McGrath, who has received a litany of endorsements from national Democratic figures, reported raising $12.8 million in the first three months of 2020 and ended the period with $14.7 million cash on hand. McConnell hauled in $7.5 million and finished the first quarter of the year with $14.9 million in the bank in his bid for a seventh Senate term.”

Amy McGrath (D) raised $6.2 million for her U.S. Senate campaign in the fourth quarter of 2019, “marking another impressive fundraising quarter even as she faces grumbling from some progressive Democrats in Kentucky,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

“The money McGrath raised in the final three months of 2019 brings her total to $16.9 million, just $2 million shy of what former Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes raised in her bid against U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014. McGrath’s campaign said it has $9.1 million on hand.”

“Amy McGrath, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leading Democratic opponent in the 2020 Kentucky Senate race, raised $10.7 million in the third quarter of 2019 after launching her campaign in July,” CBS News reports.

A viral photo shows seven young white men in “Team Mitch” T-shirts, gathered round a distressed looking cardboard cutout of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) groping and kissing her.

The caption: “Break me off a piece of that.”

Washington Post: “The photo with Ocasio-Cortez’s cardboard cutout was apparently taken Saturday at a political event called the Fancy Farm Picnic, held in a small western Kentucky town of the same name… It’s not clear exactly who the men in the photo are, though some were later featured in another image shot at Fancy Farm and shared by the McConnell campaign’s Instagram account, holding large posters of Supreme Court Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.”

“Hours after saying she would have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath changed her stance,” USA Today reports.

“McGrath, a Democrat hoping to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2020, wrote on Twitter that after ‘further understanding’ of Kavanaugh’s record, she would not have voted to confirm him.”