Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell comfortably won reelection victory on Tuesday night in an unexpectedly hard-fought Kentucky race, enjoying a consolidation of long-undecided GOP and independent voters in the final stretch.
Now he’s eying his career-long dream of becoming Senate majority leader, which appears likely on Jan. 3.
The race was called for McConnell within one minute of the polls closing by NBC News and CNN.
Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes made an all-but-impossible race for her party competitive until the final weeks of the contest, capitalizing on McConnell’s unpopularity in Kentucky and defining herself as a conservative Democrat who’s pro-coal, pro-gun and often anti-Obama.
But it wasn’t enough to oust the powerful 30-year senator in a GOP-friendly year.
“I admire her willingness to step into the arena and fight as hard as she did,” McConnell said in his victory speech. “She deserves a lot of credit for it. This was certainly a hard fought contest.”
The Grimes campaign was rather upbeat on Tuesday morning as the candidate walked into their Lexington office and slapped high-fives with staffers. But some aides privately expressed nervousness as the day wore on, recognizing their long odds of defeating the highest-ranking Republican senator.
After the race was called, Grimes called McConnell to concede, a Grimes campaign spokesperson confirmed to TPM. McConnell aide John Ashbrook tweeted a photo of the senator speaking to her.
Grimes calls McConnell. #kysen pic.twitter.com/fWkdMBdwiy
— John Ashbrook (@AshbrookJ) November 5, 2014
“This fight for you, it was worth it,” Grimes said in a concession speech shortly after 8 p.m. ET. “This journey, this fight, was for each and every one of you … for a brighter, and better future. We deserve that.”
Grimes, the secretary of state, faced national criticism in early October after she refused to say if she voted for President Obama during an editorial board interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal. Around the same time, national Democrats had stopped airing TV ads in Kentucky, although they jumped back in the following week when Grimes remained competitive in the polls.
In the final days, McConnell’s campaign went for the kill, sending mailers in Democratic areas which suggested that Kentuckians who voted for Grimes may be at risk of committing an “election violation.” Grimes immediately sued, but it was too little too late.
This article was updated at 7:58 p.m. ET, and again at 8:29 p.m. ET.
