WASHINGTON — Kathy Barnette, who has taken Republican leaders by surprise with her late break run toward the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, said she would not support Mitch McConnell to lead her party if she makes it to Washington.
“No, I think it’s time,” Barnette said in a recent interview with McClatchyDC. “These people have been in office longer than I’ve been alive. It’s time to move forward, thank you. Turn the page.” She added, “None of these people are going to release power. Power is addictive to them.”
The 50-year-old Barnette, a Black conservative woman, poses a real threat to winning Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, despite being outspent by tens of millions of dollars supporting Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick.
And the race in Pennsylvania will be a crucial piece in deciding whether McConnell becomes majority leader again in 2023. Now, just days before the vote, allies of Oz and McCormick have turned their fire on Barnette, highlighting a litany of past statements, including her praise of Black Lives Matter and her disparagement of former President Donald Trump.
McConnell, who was asked about Barnette during an interview with NPR on Thursday, would only repeat his standard line that Republicans “need to nominate people who can appeal to a broader audience that you can’t win with the base only.”
“I think the quality of the candidate who’s nominated is really important,” McConnell added.
A McConnell spokesperson did not respond to a request for further comment. It is unclear if Barnette has ever met McConnell.
While she said she visited Washington early on in her campaign to pitch her candidacy, she declined to detail who she met with.
“I did come down to D.C. I just think it’s difficult for people to embrace change and to understand what they don’t understand,” she said.
“When I did come to D.C. and meet with some of the party leaders, the first three questions were, ‘How much money are you raising? Who are your friends? Because you’re going to have to sit in a room and make a lot of phone calls. How much money are you raising? No one ever asked me my values.”
Barnette’s values are now getting the scrutiny that they avoided for months when she was seen as a non-factor.
Barnette has tweeted that “many homosexuals lead with their sexual preference” and that “pedophilia is a cornerstone of Islam.”
In 2015, Barnette called Trump “good 4 beers & barbeque but not as president,” writing on Twitter, “I like #Trump2016…he’s a riot. But he’s nothing more than headlines…very little substance.”
Trump has endorsed Oz and slammed McCormick for being “totally controlled…by Mitch McConnell.”
But he’s also put out a statement warning Republicans against supporting Barnette. Barnette has acknowledged the knives are out for her but is attempting to turn the conventional wisdom of political professionals into a rallying cry for Trump supporters.
