“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.”

Insider Louisville: “To win this race, McGrath will likely need a fairly large bloc of people who are voting for Trump for president to then cross party lines and vote for her in the Senate race.”

“Politics is dynamic. So it’s not that McGrath absolutely can’t win. But she probably needs at least one of three things to happen: 1. Trump to become much more unpopular than he is now so that he would be weaker in Kentucky, too.  2. Conservative-leaning voters to put aside their general partisan preferences because they are tired of McConnell, even as they remain aligned with Trump. 3. McGrath’s particular appeal as a former Marine to get conservative-leaning voters to support her, even as they remain aligned with Trump.”

Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath (D) raised more than $2.5 million in the first 24 hours of her campaign against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), NBC News reports.

“McGrath campaign manager Mark Nickolas said it’s the most ever raised in the first 24 hours of a Senate campaign… The haul is a sign of just how deep Democratic antipathy toward McConnell, the Senate majority leader, runs in the Trump era.”

“Former Marine Corps fighter pilot Amy McGrath announced Tuesday that she wants to challenge U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November 2020, ending months of speculation about whether she’d try to take out one of the most powerful political figures in the country,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

Said McGrath in an announcement video: “Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace. How did it come to this, that even within our own families, we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame? Well it started with this man, who was elected a lifetime ago and who has, bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise.”

Roll Call: “The highly anticipated announcement keys up what is likely to be one of the most closely watched and well-funded matchups of the 2020 congressional campaign cycle, although even Democratic supporters have acknowledged that McGrath faces long odds to unseat one of the most powerful members of the GOP.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is selling T-shirts branding him “Cocaine Mitch” as a fundraiser for his 2020 re-election campaign, Think Progress reports.

During his failed Senate campaign in West Virginia last year, Don Blankenship (R) attempted to tie McConnell — without any evidence — to a drug smuggling operation involving a company cargo ship owned by his wife’s family.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “kicked off his 2020 reelection bid with a video highlighting his successful effort to block President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland — a move that helped reshape the court and over which Democrats are still fuming,” the Washington Post reports.

The video also includes footage of President Trump hailing McConnell as a “rock-ribbed Kentucky leader” and “one of the most powerful men in the world.”

“McConnell is running for a seventh term. He has previously described his 2016 move to block Garland — and the subsequent confirmation of Neil Gorsuch after President Trump took office — as one of his proudest moments.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Kentucky finds just 33% of voters approve of the job Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is doing, while 56% disapprove and 11% are unsure.

“Chuck Schumer is actively recruiting a celebrated fighter pilot to take on Mitch McConnell in 2020 — a calculated act of aggression against a leading Democratic foe,” Politico reports.

“Schumer met with Amy McGrath, a Marine veteran-turned 2018 congressional candidate, at Democratic Party headquarters last month to pitch her on running against McConnell. McGrath listened and didn’t rule it out.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “has personally courted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to consider leaving his post to run for the Senate, according to people familiar with the effort, a move that could anger President Trump and further roil his tumultuous Cabinet,” the Washington Post reports.

“Senate GOP leaders have been so dedicated to wooing Pompeo to run for an open seat in Kansas that McConnell directly urged him to consider it in a recent telephone call.”

“Saying it was never too soon to start, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell formally announced his 2020 re-election bid in his home state Saturday and tapped the young leader of the state’s House Republicans as his campaign chairman,” the AP reports.

Said McConnell: “I don’t like starting late.”

In an interview with the Lexington Herald Leader, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) “did not rule out a bid against” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in 2020, “but said, ‘No, I’m worried about being governor. I’m the governor, that’s my focus.’”