The Kentucky governor isn’t doing what Mitch McConnell would do—and that’s the problem.
Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, speaks during a campaign event with Rob Sand, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Iowa, not pictured, at The River Center in Des Moines, Iowa, US, on Sunday, June 7, 2026.(KC McGinnis / Bloomberg)
Andy Beshear’s biggest political problem right now is that he isn’t Mitch McConnell. Hospitalized on June 14, moved to “a rehabilitation center” per social media post on July 12, and dead silent since that day, McConnell has left Kentucky’s Democratic governor—and the 4.6 million Kentuckians he’s supposed to represent—with pretty much no information and even fewer options on what comes next.
The Kentucky governor announced on Monday that despite his July 8 letter requesting evidence of McConnell’s capability to serve, Beshear has received “not an email, not a letter, not a call, not a video…absolutely nothing.” A growing chorus of Democratic voices has only grown more impatient and angry with Beshear in the interim for what they perceive as typical Democratic inaction. Although, to be fair, there’s not much the governor can do under Kentucky law and with a Republican-controlled state legislature. But were the roles reversed, you can bet that McConnell—a man whose career has been about power at all costs, political rules and norms be damned—would sure as hell not be waiting by the mailbox for a response.
We can accurately predict what McConnell, and just about any member of the state’s power-hungry Republican Party, would do because they’ve already done it. Twice. First in 2021, when Kentucky’s GOP legislature rewrote state law to strip the governor of the historically held power to appoint a U.S. Senate replacement, instead requiring that he pick from a shortlist handpicked by state Republicans. Then-state Rep. Patti Minter rightly groused at the time that “it wouldn’t be happening if we had a Republican governor.” The Democrat would also call it a “blatant power grab”—which I would call vintage McConnell, who even admitted the change was his idea, deeming it “the best way to go.” As with the roughly 40 other bills stripping him of traditional gubernatorial powers that session alone, Beshear—not coincidentally, Kentucky’s first Democratic governor since 1999—vetoed the measure, but the Republican legislature just overrode his veto.
Three years later—and less than 24 hours after McConnell announced his retirement in 2024, no less—Kentucky’s GOP changed the law again, overriding another Beshear veto, to require a special election in the event of a US Senate vacancy, effectively sidelining Beshear from the process altogether. “I had no idea that the senator was going to make his announcement yesterday,” said the bill’s sponsor, Republican Steven Rudy, who calls McConnell, as if it isn’t obvious, his “political mentor.”
But Beshear’s McConnell problem isn’t just the law that McConnell himself rewrote. It’s that McConnell taught Republicans to have little patience with the difference between “legal” versus “not legal.”
So WWMMD?
I’ll start by telling you what McConnell wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t wait patiently for “proof of life” from a senator who has missed at least 30 roll call votes, and whose office has released what may be the most yassified photo of said senator ever taken, while his staff do not respond to media queries about his condition, and Republicans seem to run down the clock. Because after August 3, under the aforementioned Kentucky law, that Senate seat can’t be filled until January. Do you really think McConnell—the man who spent nine months in 2016 repeatedly lying about an obviously made-up “long-standing tradition” against presidents filling US Supreme Court seats in election years just to block President Barack Obama’s nominee—would wait until August 4 for news? The same McConnell who, four years later, reversed course entirely, proving the “tradition” was always a lie, announcing within hours of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, just six weeks before the 2020 election, that Trump would fill her seat, callously defying her explicit dying wish that her replacement be chosen by the next president? That Mitch McConnell?
There’s plenty of conjecture that McConnell would have already declared the seat vacant and triggered the special election Kentucky law requires. He would probably be doing lots of cable hits citing Senate Rule VI, which states, “no Senator shall absent himself from the service of the Senate without leave,” and demanding video proof of life before standing down.
But I suspect McConnell would go even further.
He’d invoke section 152 of the Kentucky Constitution—the one Beshear has only gingerly raised—which states that “vacancies in all offices for the State at large, or for districts larger than a county, shall be filled by appointment of the Governor.” Except instead of wondering aloud if that power extends to federal positions, he’d state that it absolutely does. Then he’d dare Kentucky Republicans to explain, especially to the Bluegrass State’s residents, why laws they slapped on the books just two years ago override the Commonwealth’s most sacred legal document. As an actual lawyer, he might want to start with Republican lawmaker Josh Calloway, who is not an attorney, but recently threatened that if the governor doesn’t play by Kentucky GOP rules, “there will definitely have to be something done in a legal manner.” Beshear would call his bluff and tell him he’ll see him in court.
I think he’d flex the political capital that winning two elections has gotten him by mobilizing every crony, surrogate, and remotely friendly lawyer to fan out like righteous locusts across every media channel, every social media platform, every podunk podcast that would have them to Demand Answers on Behalf of the American People. He’d bang the drum for hearings, threaten subpoenas, and insist anyone currently claiming McConnell is fit to serve should be willing to say, under oath, exactly what they know and who they’ve spoken to. That includes every aide, every elected official, and every pundit who claims to have had a recent “lengthy” conversation with McConnell. If they’re willing to say it on Fox News, he’d argue, they better be ready to say it under oath. Basically he would turn the mystery of McConnell’s status into a daily political liability for Kentucky’s GOP until someone finally blinked.
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It would be giving myself too much credit to call this speculation. I’m just running McConnell’s playbook, the one I’ve watched him and the GOP more broadly run so many times I know their moves like the back of my hand. The same is true of the Democrats who, like Beshear, I’ve also watched do what they do for a decade—things like expressing concern, writing sternly worded letters, giving the bullies their lunch money before they ask. It’s a whole party of people who, despite watching Republicans treat rules and norms like something for the other side, keep treating this like a good-faith fight.
Look, I get that Beshear is making the cautious and, frankly, legal choice. The problem is that McConnell’s legacy—beyond stocking the Supreme Court with enough corrupt conservative partisans to make America a joke on the world stage—is helping turn American politics into an endless power grab. Even if, and perhaps especially if, you hate the man and everything he stands for and want to do away with it, you have to ask yourself, “What Would Mitch McConnell Do?” And then, if the situation calls for it, do that.
The ultimate irony here is that if anyone actually takes action on McConnell’s absence, it’s likely to be Republicans. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley complained that in McConnell’s absence the party is “down a vote,” meaning its hyperconservative projects like the SAVE Act—an anti-democratic federal voter ID proposal—have failed because “we don’t have the votes for that,” and that “we might want to do something about that.” Rep. Tim Burchett said the time to talk about incapacitation clauses is “yesterday” and called the situation “pathetic.” Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin, told a reporter he thought McConnell’s “proof of life photo” was “older” than suggested. And Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said, “Somebody needs to do something. Somebody needs to come out and put a little video out.”
In the end, it’s not proof life—or the Kentucky electorate— Republicans care about. It’s a 52nd vote.
I guess if there’s anyone most likely to put McConnell’s playbook to good use, it’s the party that’s already been putting it into practice.
Kali HollowayKali Holloway is a columnist for The Nation and the former director of the Make It Right Project, a national campaign to take down Confederate monuments and tell the truth about history. Her writing has appeared in Salon, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Time, AlterNet, Truthdig, The Huffington Post, The National Memo, Jezebel, Raw Story, and numerous other outlets.