“Guys, this isn’t what I thought swimming with dolphins would be like.”local official to defeat Huddleston, but
in the final weeks of the campaign Mc
Connell surged to an upset victory, thanks,
in large part, to a television ad created by
Roger Ailes, the Nixon media adviser
who later became the mastermind be
hind Fox News. Ailes was helped by Larry
McCarthy, a virtuoso of negative cam
paign ads who later made the racially
charged Willie Horton ad, attacking the
1988 Democratic candidate for President,
Michael Dukakis. The McConnell ad
depicted a pack of bloodhounds franti
cally hunting for Huddleston, ostensibly
because he’d missed so many Senate votes
while off giving paid speeches. It was
funny, but Huddleston’s attendance rec
ord, ninetyfour per cent, wasn’t out of
the ordinary, and his speeches violated
no Senate rules. Yet, as McCarthy proudly
told the Washington Post, “It was like
tossing a match on a pool of gasoline.”
That year, McConnell was the only Re
publican who defeated an incumbent
Democratic senator. Two years after crit
icizing Huddleston’s outside speaking
fees, McConnell went on a lucrative elev
enday speaking tour of the West Coast.
(McConnell’s spokesman says, “The
Leader never missed a vote.”)
In 1990, Ailes helped McConnell paint
his Democratic challenger, Harvey Sloane,
as a dangerous drug addict. Television
ads showed images of pill containers as
a narrator warned of Sloane’s reliance on
“powerful,” “moodaltering” “depressants”
that had been prescribed “without a legal
permit.” Sloane, an Ivy Leagueeducated
doctor whom McConnell mocked as “a
wimp from the East,” had gone to Ken
tucky through a federal program that
provides medical services to the rural
poor, and went on to become Louisville’s
mayor. During the Senate campaign,
Sloane, who had postponed a hip replace
ment until after the election, renewed a
prescription for sleeping pills although
his license had expired. It was a real lapse
in judgment, but he didn’t have a drug
problem. Sloane said of McConnell’s at
tack, “It was craven. He’s just a conniv
ing guy. He’s the Machiavelli of the twen
tyfirst century.” McConnell himself has
summarized his approach to campaigns
simply: “If they throw a stone at you, you
drop a boulder on them.”
Television airtime and top media con
sultants aren’t cheap. McConnell’s Sen
ate campaigns further convinced him that
his old oped opposing political money
was wrongheaded. “I never would have
been able to win my race if there had
been a limit on the amount of money I
could raise and spend,” he writes in his
autobiography. Larry Forgy, a Kentucky
Republican who fell out with McCon
nell, said that this was certainly true. “He
knows without a definite advantage in
money, he’s not going anywhere in pol
itics,” Forgy said, in “The Cynic,” Alec
MacGillis’s deeply researched 2014 biog
raphy of McConnell. “Politics in small
Southern states requires a certain amount
of showmanship, and he just didn’t have
the ability to do that.”
Most politicians find fundraising odi
ous, but Alan Simpson, the former Re
publican senator from Wyoming, whoserved a dozen years with McConnell,
told MacGillis that fundraising was “a
joy to him,” adding, “He gets a twinkle in
his eye and his step quickens. I mean, he
loves it.” McConnell’s donors have found
themselves rewarded. Kelly Craft, the
wife of Joe Craft, one of McConnell’s
major backers—a coal magnate and the
president of Alliance Resource Partners—
currently serves as Ambassador to the
U.N., after serving earlier in the Trump
Administration as Ambassador to Can
ada. The U.N. appointment, especially,
drew criticism, because her only exper
tise was fundraising. A Kentuckian ac
quainted with the Crafts noted that the
U.N. seat was once filled by such titans
as Adlai Stevenson and Daniel Patrick
Moynihan. “It’s just incredible,” he says.
According to “60 Minutes,” McCon
nell and Chao helped another coal com
pany skirt responsibility for one of the
biggest environmental disasters in U.S.
history. In 2000, Jack Spadaro, an engi
neer for the federal Mine Safety and
Health Administration, began conduct
ing an investigation in Martin County,
Kentucky, after a slurry pond owned by
Massey Energy burst open, releasing three
hundred million gallons of lavalike coal
waste that killed more than a million fish
and contaminated the water systems of
nearly thirty thousand people. Spadaro
and his team were working on a report
that documented eight apparent viola
tions of the law, which could have led to
charges of criminal negligence and cost
Massey hundreds of thousands of dol
lars in fines. But, that November, George
W. Bush was elected President, and he
soon named Chao his Labor Secretary,
giving her authority over the Mine Safety
and Health Administration. She chose
McConnell’s former chief of staff, Ste
ven Law, as her chief of staff. Spadaro
told me, “Law had his finger in everything,
and was truly running the Labor Depart
ment. He was Mitch’s guy.” The day Bush
was sworn in, Spadaro was ordered to
halt his investigation. Before the Labor
Department issued any fines, Massey
made a hundredthousanddollar dona
tion to the National Republican Sena
torial Committee. McConnell himself
had run the unit, which raises funds for
Senate campaigns, between 1997 and 2000.
Massey ended up paying only fifty
six hundred dollars in federal fines. Law
went on to run a cluster of outside money