Amy McGrath is the Democratic nominee to take on the least popular Senator in the country, Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Senate Majority Leader is the master of gridlock and has prevented progressive national security legislation from being brought up on the Senate floor.
Shortly after the law prohibiting women participants in marine combat was amended, McGrath was accepted into the United States Naval Academy where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and played four years on the women’s soccer team. Afterward, McGrath was commissioned as an officer in the US Marine Corps, where she went on to serve as an F/A-18 Pilot and Hornet Weapons Systems Officer. She completed two combat tours in Afghanistan in 2002 and one tour in Iraq in 2003, flying 89 combat missions.
McGrath holds a Master’s in Global security from John Hopkins University and is a graduate of the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the National Defense University. She has taught courses at the US Naval Academy, including a course covering the details of the Iran nuclear agreement.
In 2016, she wrote an article for Foreign Policy arguing that the United States should publish a report examining the flaws in its decision to invade Iraq – a war she fought in – which she calls in the article “a strategic failure.”
Despite McConnell’s unpopularity, he will not be easy to beat. He is the master of fundraising and negative campaigning. He was first elected in 1984 and has been reelected five times since. But Kentuckians may be growing tired of him; he had a dismal 36% approval rating.
McGrath ran for the House of Representatives in 2018 but lost a close race. She is an excellent fundraiser and can win in 2020.
