Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) primary challenger, Matt Bevin, called the top Senate Republican a “coward” exhibiting the same kind of childishness as an eighth grader in response to McConnell’s campaign jabbing at Bevin’s family over a new campaign ad.
After Bevin’s campaign aired a new ad featuring his large family, the twitter handle @BailoutBevinKy, run by the McConnell campaign, tweeted out I was waiting for ‘My dad went to MIT!'” a dig at Bevin suggesting that he was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I think it’s the same kind of childishness that we’ve seen a lot of from the McConnell campaign. He’s acting as if he’s running for eighth grade class president. The man is a coward who’s unwilling to debate anybody on anything,” Bevin said on Wednesday. “He’s been there 30 years but is unwilling and unable to make the case for why he deserves six more years. He thinks he’s just going to get it. He thinks he can buy it using other people’s money by blanketing the airwaves but he’s so arrogant that he’s unwilling to make the case for why he deserves the vote. And it’s a shame. So when you see this kind of nonsense where people attack family members —and this is from a man who was so outraged when he felt that someone in his family was being insulted in some way. The man’s a hypocrite.”
Reached for comment, the McConnell campaign said that Bevin was using his family to launch political attacks.
“There’s no question that Matt Bevin has a beautiful family, but it’s unfortunate that he feels the need to bring them into the campaign to launch political attacks. All the statements our campaign has made about Mr. Bevin are true,” McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a statement. “Matt just isn’t the candidate he’s portraying himself to be to Kentucky voters.”
The campaign for Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s likely Democratic general election opponent, also weighed in.
“Just last year, Mitch McConnell declared that political shots on opponents’ family members should be off-limits, and I hope someone reminds the Senator of that. His campaign’s tasteless attack on Mr. Bevin’s daughters is out of bounds,” Grimes spokeswoman Charly Norton said in a statement. “Innocent children should never be mocked just to benefit the campaign of a 30-year Washington insider.”
Watch Bevin’s comments below:
The original tweet from @BailoutBevinKy can be viewed below:
This post was updated.
