Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks at the Fancy Farm picnic in Kentucky. | Timothy D. Easley/AP Photo 2020 elections Mitch McConnell campaign tweets image of tombstone with opponent’s name

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign tweeted out a photo of satirical tombstones over the weekend, including one featuring an election opponent’s name, hours after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that claimed the lives of 22 people.

The tombstones named Amy McGrath, his main Democratic opponent in the 2020 Senate race for Kentucky, as well as Judge Merrick Garland, whose nomination to the Supreme Court he blocked during the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency.


The grave markers also identified concepts the senator has decried, such as socialism and the Green New Deal. The campaign’s tweet labeled McConnell the “Grim Reaper of Socialism” and shows the tombstones at the Fancy Farm picnic, a local Kentucky Catholic fundraising event.

The tweet was shared as details of the El Paso shooting were developing.

By Monday, McGrath responded with indignation, particularly in light of the two mass shootings that took place over the weekend, that the campaign posted the image on Twitter. In a series of tweets, McGrath called the tombstones “symptomatic of what is wrong with our system.”

Hours after the El Paso shooting, Mitch McConnell proudly tweeted this photo. I find it so troubling that our politics have become so nasty and personal that the Senate Majority Leader thinks it's appropriate to use imagery of the death of a political opponent (me) as messaging. pic.twitter.com/2x5kO5jwPi — Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) August 5, 2019

“I’m fine with the ordinary rough and tumble of politics, but this strikes me as beyond the pale,” she wrote.

Kevin Golden, McConnell’s campaign manager, said in a statement that the tombstones were in reference to a cartoon, which the campaign has shared before and was originally critical of McConnell's record in the Senate.

“Our supporters built an homage to the Courier Journal cartoon at Fancy Farm and we posted their work,” Golden said. “Amy McGrath has tweeted this very cartoon several times and it’s shameful that she’s pretending not to know exactly what it is referencing in order to politicize a tragedy.”

McGrath has tweeted out the cartoon before, but to criticize McConnell for taking so lightly the issues it portrayed.

ICYMI: before Mitch McConnell gave sick coal miners only 2 minutes of his time, he thought it was funny to tweet about them dying 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 https://t.co/hBkGpUCPv7 — Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) July 29, 2019

James Arkin contributed to this report.

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Amy McGrath