Kentucky Republican Matt Bevin, who is running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), shrugged off Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) support for his opponent.
Paul endorsed McConnell in March.
“Politics make for strange bedfellows. I think Rand aspires to potentially other things on the political spectrum,” Bevin said in an interview with ABC’s Jeff Zeleny posted Friday. “There is nobody in Kentucky that is fooled by this Mitch-Rand love narrative. The people who have ultimately coalesced behind Rand Paul are people who have from the beginning been with me in large measure and are continuing to come to my side of the equation.”
Those people, Bevin continued, are looking for an alternative to McConnell.
In August, a recording of McConnell’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, quoted him saying that he was “sorta holding my nose for two years,” with McConnell “cause what we’re doing here is gonna be a big benefit to Rand in ’16.” Benton ran Paul’s campaign for Senate in 2010.
After the recording surfaced, Benton stressed his support had nothing to do with possibly helping Paul down the road.
“I believe in Senator McConnell and am 100 percent committed to his re-election,” Benton said in a statement.