Senate contender Charles Booker contrasts with Amy McGrath in endorsing Bernie Sanders

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker announced Monday he is supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential campaign.

The choice draws another contrast for Kentucky Democrats in their upcoming primary election to challenge Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell in the fall.

Presumed front-runner Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat aviator, endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in January. Biden and Sanders, representing the moderate to progressive ends of the party respectively, are poised to joust as the Democratic field dwindles on the eve of Super Tuesday.

Booker, a freshman state legislator from Louisville, has run to the left of McGrath on most issues. He said in a campaign video released Monday that Kentuckians need a fighter in the White House

"We've got to be asking ourselves ... who gives a damn about us? The answer is now what it always has been: Bernie Sanders," Booker said.

Booker voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to his campaign. He goes on to say Sanders is the best candidate who can address structural racism, protect the environment and end poverty.

"(Bernie) knows that health care is a right, that college should be free and that we won't defeat corporate greed by running as a bland moderate," Booker said.

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That remark is certain to be viewed as a rebuttal to McGrath's most recent TV spot in which she came out against proposals such as "Medicare for All" and free college backed by Sanders.

"We need a senator who fights for things like affordable health care, college and technical school, not tax cuts for wealthy donors," she said to the camera. "That doesn't mean free college or Medicare for All; I'm against that."

The ad signaled how McGrath, who has raised roughly $17 million, is looking beyond the Democratic primary, which includes Booker and Mike Broihier, a retired Marine and Lincoln County farmer.

Biden campaigned for McGrath during her unsuccessful 2018 race for a U.S. House seat. He has criticized many of Sanders' plans as too costly.

Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary and quickly gobbled up endorsements Monday from former rivals Sen. Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who ended their own presidential bids.

The move demonstrates how many establishment Democrats fear that Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont, cannot build a broad enough coalition to win the White House.

"I think there's an awful lot of people who are running for office who don't want to run with Bernie at the top of the ticket as a self-proclaimed socialist," Biden said in an interview with CBS News on Monday.

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McGrath has shared her sentiments about how the former vice president is someone “respected and beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike." She said in January that Biden can bring the country back together and "can return honor and integrity to the Oval Office."

Sanders, however, told supporters at a news conference Monday that the Democratic establishment is trying to rally against him ahead of Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states vote in the primary, determining one-third of the pledged delegates — 1,344 out of the 1,991 needed to win the nomination.

The Sanders campaign reminded primary voters that Biden supported former President George W. Bush going to war in Iraq almost two decades ago.

"I do not believe we will defeat Donald Trump with a candidate like Joe Biden who supported the Iraq War," Sanders said in Monday tweet.

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Reach Phillip M. Bailey at pbailey@courier-journal.com or 502-582-4475. Follow him on Twitter at @phillipmbailey.