“This is the Whac-A-Mole period of the campaign,” Mr. McConnell said on the tape. “When anybody sticks their head up, do them out.”

Ms. Judd’s head was up, so to speak, amid speculation that she would run against him in 2014. Along with comments that could mark her as a “carpetbagger” and an “out-of-touch, Hollywood liberal,” aides found fodder for more personal attacks.

“This sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced,” one man said. He cited her confessions of suicidal tendencies in an autobiography. The group laughed at an interview in which Ms. Judd, in an apparent critique of American consumerism, said, “I absolutely flipped out when I saw pink fuzzy socks on a rack.”

In March, Ms. Judd announced that she would not run for the seat. Her spokeswoman said: “This is yet another example of the politics of personal destruction that embody Mitch McConnell and are pervasive in Washington, D.C. We expected nothing less from Mitch McConnell and his camp than to take a personal struggle such as depression, which many Americans cope with on a daily basis, and turn it into a laughing matter.”