On Monday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell huddled with a few top aides at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters — but the 2018 midterms weren’t on the agenda.

Instead, they pored over plans for McConnell’s own far-off 2020 reelection campaign.


For 90 minutes, McConnell, his chief of staff Phil Maxson, state director Terry Carmack, and political adviser Josh Holmes talked about the political landscape back home in Kentucky and gamed out how the campaign would be staffed and structured.

The early discussions, which were detailed by more than a half-dozen of McConnell’s closest advisers and allies, reflects the leader’s long-held penchant for intensive — some would say obsessive — preparedness and planning.

Yet it also underscores a stark reality confronting the Kentucky Republican. At a time when anti-establishment sentiment is roiling the party, the 76-year-old McConnell, who this week became the longest-serving Senate Republican leader in history, has a target on his back and is taking no chances.

Polling has shown the leader’s approval ratings lagging in his home state, and there is the ongoing threat of a primary challenge.

“You have to start laying the groundwork really early,” said Billy Piper, a former McConnell chief of staff who remains an outside adviser. “He lives by the motto you can start too late, but you can never start too early. And that probably gets more true with each passing cycle.”

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Though McConnell is focused mainly on keeping the Senate in Republican hands in November, he‘s also taking deliberate steps in an effort to ensure his own political survival.

Behind the scenes, he‘s tasked Holmes, one of his top lieutenants, with assembling a 2020 team. His team has held initial discussions about researching prospective opponents and setting up a super PAC to buttress the campaign.

They also plan to tap into a finance network that has swelled since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

And his team has begun taking a fresh look back at his successful 2014 reelection, when an unpopular McConnell made the case to Kentuckians that his Senate leadership post was a boon to the state. Some advisers are eager to make a similar case in 2020. As an example, they point to 2017 legislation that McConnell pushed to extend health care benefits to retired mine workers.

Those involved in mapping out McConnell’s reelection bid say it’s following a familiar playbook.

Steven Law, a former McConnell chief of staff who oversees the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, recalled first going to work for the Kentucky Republican in 1987. Shortly after, he was assigned to begin putting together an opposition research file on the former Louisville Democratic Mayor Harvey Sloane, who was planning on running against McConnell three years later, in 1990.

“This is vintage McConnell,” said Law. “He looks down the road and ahead five corners to see where things could be headed.”

McConnell, who since his first Senate election in 1984 has established a reputation as a sharp-elbowed campaigner, is regarded as a political titan in Kentucky. Yet his path to another term won’t necessarily be smooth.

The leader’s poll numbers are weak. A Western Kentucky University survey conducted in April found McConnell’s approval rating at just 30 percent in the state, the same figure recorded in a December Mason-Dixon poll of Kentucky voters.

Within the state, there‘s recurring speculation that Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who McConnell defeated in a bitter 2014 primary, could again challenge the leader for the GOP nomination. While the prospect of a McConnell-Bevin rematch is widely viewed as remote — the two are said to be on far better terms than they were four years ago, and McConnell has been complimentary of Bevin’s tenure — the governor has persistently refused to comment on his plans.

Bevin‘s aides didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether he is interested in a 2020 Senate bid.

McConnell aides acknowledge they face potential obstacles. But they‘re quick to point out that he also had subpar poll numbers in 2014, when he trounced his Republican and Democratic challengers.

Still, conservative leaders, many of whom have been warring with McConnell for years, say they’re anxious to find someone to take on the leader.

“Many conservatives view McConnell as a sometime, and absolutely tepid, ally of Trump’s agenda,” said Ned Ryun, the CEO of American Majority, a right-leaning group. “Kentucky can certainly do better than him, and the GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate could also use a new face and a new approach.”

McConnell has been quietly spreading cash to down-ballot Kentucky Republicans, a move partly aimed at winning favor among the party rank-and-file and cutting off potential opposition. So far this year, he’s doled out about $140,000 though his Bluegrass Committee to more than 70 incumbents and candidates for state legislative seats, according to several people familiar with the disbursements. The leader has taken a personal interest in the effort, signing letters to each recipient.

While the specter of a serious primary is real, there is hope among McConnell aides that it has subsided in recent months. A once-ambitious anti-incumbent campaign led by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has fizzled, and President Donald Trump, who speaks with McConnell regularly, has thrown his support to several Senate Republicans up for reelection in 2018.

For now, the bigger question is who McConnell’s Democratic challenger will be.

The party’s bench in the conservative state has thinned. In 2016, Republicans seized the state House for the first time in nearly a century and the GOP now controls both legislative chambers.

Yet a few names are circulating, including sports radio show host Matt Jones, retired Marine corps fighter pilot and 2018 congressional hopeful Amy McGrath, and state Attorney General Andy Beshear, son of ex-Gov. Steve Beshear.

Reached by phone Wednesday evening, Jones, a liberal who has used his popular show to target McConnell, said he expects to decide on a run by the middle of next year. Jones said he‘s confident he could make a persuasive case to voters that McConnell’s time is up, but added that he fully understood how hard it would be to take him out.

"You can't go into a battle like this unprepared," he said.

McConnell has begun building out a staff. A short list of potential campaign managers has been established, and he recently tapped Shane Noem, a worker in his official office, to serve as a field aide. Michael Duncan and Michael Millican, who oversaw the digital efforts on the 2014 campaign, are expected to return to the campaign in similar roles.

John Ashbrook, a longtime McConnell hand, is expected to assist the campaign with communications.

The early activity, people close to the McConnell contend, is geared toward sending a loud and clear message to potential challengers.

“Anyone who will run against him will be put through a blender,” said Scott Jennings, a longtime McConnell confidant, “the likes of which they’ve never experienced.”

