Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and combat pilot, announced Tuesday she was entering the 2020 U.S. Senate race to challenge Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
McGrath, 44, posted a YouTube video to announce her candidacy, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. In the video, McGrath said she wrote to McConnell when she was 13 and told him she wanted to fly combat jets when she was an adult.
"He never wrote back," McGrath said in the video. "I'm Amy McGrath, and I've often wondered, how many other people did Mitch McConnell never take the time to write back or even think about?"
McGrath served more than two decades in the military and flew 89 combat missions, the Courier-Journal reported.
McConnell, 77, was first elected to the Senate in 1984. He serves as "the central ballast" in Washington for President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported.
McGrath, from Georgetown, ran for Congress in 2018 but lost to Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., the Courier-Journal reported. She is married to Erik Henderson, a former member of the military who is a lifelong Republican, according to the newspaper. They have three children.
McConnell's reelection team, in anticipation of McGrath's candidacy, responded with a video that used quotes from her 2018 campaign for the House, the Times reported. During that campaign, McGrath said she supported a single-payer health care system and abortion rights.
McConnell's campaign handlers also released a three-minute advertisement that featured Trump praising the majority leader for being "Kentucky tough" during the stormy confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Courier-Journal reported.
McGrath, however, claims McConnell's leadership has turned Washington into "something we all despise."
"Everything that's wrong in Washington had to start someplace," McGrath said in her video. "It started with this man who was elected a lifetime ago, and who has, bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise."
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