Tagged: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Piggybacking on a warning from more than a dozen Kentucky Tea Party groups, the head of a libertarian-leaning Super PAC says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is everything that is wrong with politics.

Preston Bates is executive director of Liberty For All, which is a Texas-based group founded by 22-year-old millionaire John Ramsey.

In a series of statements, Bates says McConnell is unpopular enough to unite independents, libertarians and Democrats alike.

From Liberty for All:

On a Primary Challenge

“Mitch McConnell can’t afford a conversation with primary voters on his record, so his only prayer is an Ashley Judd candidacy so he can side-step the primary.”

Is Mitch Tea Party?

“Mitch McConnell is a poster-boy for everything that’s wrong with politics: a career politician who’s made tens of millions while Kentucky families suffer. He’s raised the debt ceiling, called TARP a success, and is fresh of raising taxes on Kentucky’s families. Simply put, he’s anything but a tea partier.”

A coalition of more than a dozen Tea Party groups in Kentucky are issuing a stern warning to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell against co-opting the grassroots movement — and they plan to draft a challenger for the 2014 Senate primary.

The United Kentucky Tea Party is made up of several independent organizations from across the state. In a press release sent late Monday evening, the group says that McConnell and state Republicans are being "intellectually dishonest" by calling anyone with the GOP leader's campaign personnel a tea party leader.

"What I can tell you is we have a battle plan that we’re executing and to date that plan is working better than we expected. And our goal is to have a primary challenger for Sen. McConnell,” said John Kemper, a spokesman for United Kentucky Tea Party. 

In a fundraiser e-mail, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign is warning Kentuckians that President Obama and Senate Democrats are "coming for your guns" and undermining the Second Amendment.

"You and I are literally surrounded. The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment. On your rights. On your freedom," McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in the January 20 e-mail.

Last week, the president unveiled a legislative package that he urged Congress to pass in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. It includes a ban on assault weapons and armor piercing bullets, universal background checks and a 10-round limit on ammunition magazines.

Actress Ashley Judd says the "people of Kentucky need a fighter" when asked about a potential bid against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in 2014.

The Hollywood celebrity and activist has been flirting with a run for public office for months, and made the comments at the the Kentucky Society of Washington's Bluegrass Ball this weekend.

In a brief interview, Judd said there is no time frame for her decision but that she is taking a serious look at running.

From Politico:

"I am incredibly honored and frankly overwhelmed by the outpouring of support — that the people of Kentucky are interested in having me represent them is the greatest honor of my life so far, and I am certainly taking a close look at it,” Judd told POLITICO before The Kentucky Society of Washington’s Bluegrass Ball in Washington.