Mitch McConnell

It’s been 16 years since a Senate seat opened in Kentucky, one that was filled by the election of Rand Paul in 2010. Now, with the impending departure of Mitch McConnell — who has not only served in the Senate since 1985 but is also the longest-serving Senate party leader ever — another significant opening in the nation’s legislature has occurred. Four candidates are now vying to succeed McConnell in the Senate. Whoever wins will enter the Senate as a freshman member and is unlikely to immediately wield the influence McConnell accumulated over more than four decades in office. But what made McConnell such a significant figure — for both his allies and his detractors? And what do we know about the current slate of candidates looking to take his place? The party leader McConnell’s allies have described him as an effective leader, party builder and mentor, while critics argue that his tactics contributed to obstruction and polarization in Washington. “When I ran for office — my first time running was in 2003 — he recognized something in me and gave me suggestions along the way, gave me a pat on the back when I deserved it and gave me a kick in the butt when I needed it,” said Trey Grayson, a Northern Kentucky native, attorney and former Republican Kentucky Secretary of State from 2004 to early 2011. “He did that for a lot of people.” McConnell endorsed Grayson in the 2010 Republican Senate primary, which he lost to Rand Paul. On the other hand, said Jared Kamrass, a Cincinnati-based Democratic media consultant, “he did help usher in this era of very, very stark polarization and the gamesmanship of politics.” Kamrass said that McConnell was, at the most basic level, an effective politician. “Mitch McConnell had really built the Republican Party from scratch since being elected senator,” said Darrin Wilson, professor of political science at Northern Kentucky University. “He’s been able to build an infrastructure that has been very powerful and very effective in electing Republicans across the commonwealth.” One way he did this, Wilson said, was by recruiting people for local and state-level offices. He was also integral in fundraising campaigns. During McConnell’s tenure, Kentucky also underwent a dramatic partisan shift at the state and federal levels. Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Wendell Ford won reelection in 1992. “At the national level, it’s still a solidly Republican state, conservative state, which I think makes it difficult for any Democrat in particular to be able to overcome that hurdle,” Wilson said. “Especially as a state that has a very urban-rural divide, where you have Democratic votes very much concentrated in the urban areas, whereas the rest of the state, more rural communities, rural counties tend to vote more Republican at the federal level for federal elections.” That shift, Grayson said, reflects McConnell’s long-running focus on building the Republican Party from the ground up. “We call him the ar