This much we can say: Mitch McConnell is less toxic than a criminally convicted coal baron who was blamed for the death of 29 people in a mining disaster.

But the Senate majority leader’s headaches in 2018 are far from over.


Less than a day after triumphing over Don Blankenship in West Virginia, the Republican leader is bracing for a flurry of anti-McConnell barrages in two critical primaries in Arizona and Mississippi that will test whether McConnell can effectively be used as a foil by conservative candidates. Candidates there are already attacking him and using his name generously to raise money, signaling that McConnell will face another round of insults from conservatives in his bid to keep the Senate in Republican hands.

McConnell and his allies are expected to deploy the same strategy in those two races as they did in West Virginia: Quietly directing Republican voters toward the most “electable” candidates, while ignoring the attacks from GOP insurgents, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen senators and confidants.

“He’s become a lot more involved and engaged, and I think he realizes that helps us get the best possible outcomes. And that gives us the best chance of keeping and retaining our majority,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a GOP leader who spent Wednesday morning in a private meeting with McConnell. “The leader is very interested in having electable candidates coming out of that nominating process.”

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Despite his national unpopularity and middling support among diehard conservative voters, the Senate majority leader was vindicated on Tuesday night as he and his allies stopped Blankenship, an ex-con who spent the stretch run of the campaign attacking McConnell as “cocaine Mitch” and the “swamp captain.” McConnell was “very unhappy” with Blankenship's attacks on his family, according to a GOP senator, but avoided personally responding to Blankenship until he had vanquished the trouble-making candidate.

It was a marked departure from Alabama, where McConnell-aligned groups spent $8 million in a failed campaign to save former Sen. Luther Strange. McConnell's team took a much less conspicuous approach in West Virginia, having concluded that their scorched earth campaign targeting Roy Moore backfired badly.

McConnell political aides quietly launched a non-descript group, Mountain Families PAC, which spent $1.3 million on TV ads highlighting Blankenship's connection to the mining disaster and alleging he was responsible for contaminating drinking water in the state. In both cases, McConnell’s fingerprints were all over the GOP primaries, but his profile in each case was vastly different.

“Rather than keeping them [from running], I think we just need to have an election where they don’t win,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, in referring to candidates opposed by GOP leaders. “Hopefully we can help shed a little light on it and people will actually want to win rather than nominate other unelectable candidates.”

The Arizona race is top of mind: McConnell has made no secret that he prefers Rep. Martha McSally over pardoned ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio and hard-charging former state Sen. Kelli Ward, according to confidants. After that, the GOP leader will turn his sights to Chris McDaniel, a state senator in Mississippi who nearly beat now-retired Sen. Thad Cochran in 2014 and is running against appointed Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

All three have already tested anti-McConnell messages: Arpaio said he wouldn’t support the Kentucky Republican as GOP leader. Ward sent a fundraising email on Wednesday that mentioned McConnell 14 times, and asserted that McConnell, in supporting McSally, wants “Jeff Flake 2.0.” Flake has angered conservatives with his frequent criticism of Trump.

McDaniel said McConnell’s meddling in GOP primaries puts winnable races at risk. He vowed, too, not to support the Kentucky Republican as GOP leader if he wins.

“I believe McConnell is the reason Republicans don’t enjoy a large majority in the Senate, and it’s because he supports candidates who are more like Democrats than Republicans,” McDaniel said in an email on Wednesday. “That’s how they ended up with Roy Moore and losing to a Democrat. That’s what happens when Mitch McConnell gets involved.”

McConnell’s allies say he’s happy to absorb those attacks — mainly because they don’t believe they’ll work.

Blankenship “made a bad bet. And I think that it will probably be instructive to other candidates,” said North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, the deputy leader of the party’s campaign arm. “It’s one thing to say, ‘I want the leadership to change or have other priorities.’ And it’s another thing to take it to that personal attack.”

Already, there are signs that insurgent candidates will avoid Blankenship’s over-the-top tactics, which have been privately mocked by senators in both parties. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) jokingly referred to McConnell as “Cocaine Mitch” at a Senate spouse’s dinner on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the event.

Eric Beach, a top strategist for Ward, said that she will not make her campaign simply a referendum on McConnell.

“Not even close,” he said when asked to compare her campaign with Blankenship’s. “We’re not going to go in wanting just to blow things up — that’s easy — but to get things done.”

Arpaio has been less direct in his attacks on McConnell, other than to say he won’t support him as leader. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Republicans said that with two conservatives running against McSally in Arizona, she will have the upper hand in the August primary. Still, retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) was concerned enough about Vice President Mike Pence praising Arpaio this month as a “tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law” that he spoke privately to Pence to express his disapproval.

“Troubled,” Flake said of his reaction to Pence’s praise for Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt. “I mean, given his history, he’s no champion of the rule of the law.”

Still, the Arizona primary is months away, while Mississippi has no primary, just an election in November that will go to a run-off if no candidate wins a majority. That gave McConnell time on Wednesday to celebrate in press interviews and in private meetings with his caucus.

“Attacking me and my family,” McConnell told Fox News, “was good for a distant third place.”

Candidates in Ohio and Indiana who attacked McConnell also failed to win their primaries, leading to increasing certainty among the GOP leader and his allies that conservative candidates can’t win on anti-McConnell attacks alone.

"Last night's results show that attacking Mitch McConnell earns candidates a first-class ticket to last place,” said John Ashbrook, a McConnell adviser and former aide.

Alex Isenstadt and Eli Okun contributed to this report.

