Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is facing backlash from within his own party for not being more aggressive on replacing former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as questions swirl about his health.
McConnell was taken to the hospital on June 14, but his Senate office did not say anything about his health for several weeks.
After much speculation about his condition, the update from McConnell claimed that he did not suffer “a heart attack or a stroke,” despite a 911 call mentioning cardiac arrest at his residence the day he was taken to the hospital.
He said he was taken to the hospital after a fall and was “briefly unconscious,” adding that he subsequently “had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia” while recovering, attaching a picture of himself holding the day’s newspaper alongside his wife, Elaine Chao.
Still, Beshear, 48, has said that McConnell’s office has not been in regular communication with him, saying last week he had even been under the impression that the 84-year-old senator had died.
“It had been a month before anything had been put out, not even an official statement from Senator McConnell. In fact, I’d gotten two calls from different agencies—not state agencies—suggesting he’s passed,” Beshear said on Saturday.
Kentucky law gives the governor the authority to immediately call a special election when a sitting senator dies, prompting several Democratic figures to call on Beshear to get a concrete answer on McConnell’s health—or just call a special election if he cannot.
Progressive podcaster Jennifer Welch said that Beshear should simply call a special election unless he sees tangible evidence that McConnell is alive.
“If the situation were reversed, I think Beshear just needs to go ahead and run the special election,” Welch said on her podcast IHIP News.
She said that the governor should say, “We haven’t heard from him…This proof-of-life hostage photograph doesn’t work. I haven’t heard from him; I don’t know that he’s all there. And so, he hasn’t called me to prove this; he hasn’t made anything available for me to prove this. So I’m going to run the special election.
“That’s what Mitch would do,” she added.
Other commentators have expressed outrage with Beshear, who is rumored to be mulling a 2028 presidential run, for not being more aggressive on McConnell’s health.
“I think Beshear’s unwillingness to push on this shows he is not the fighter Dems need for the White House run in ’28,” Democratic commentator Adam Cochran said.
“It’s the same walking on eggshells that gave us Merrick Garland,” he said, in reference to McConnell indefinitely stalling on Garland’s appointment to the Supreme Court, effectively snubbing former President Barack Obama of another appointment to the high court.
“If he can’t push on McConnell’s health, then why would we think he has the drive to go after Trump cronies, to root out the corruption... and to fight to prosecute those who aided foreign interference,” he continued. “I actually thought he was a strong wildcard pick with potential for the ’28 ticket. Not top of my list, but not bottom either.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Beshear’s office for comment.
Republican lawmakers in Kentucky passed a controversial law two years ago that changed the rules for filling a Senate vacancy before the end of a term.
State law now requires that a special election be held immediately if a sitting senator dies, altering the previous law, which gave the governor the power to appoint someone to the seat until the next election.
Before his prolonged hospitalization, McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in U.S. history, said he would not be seeking reelection to the upper chamber in the 2026 midterm elections.
His final months in office have been plagued by a series of health scares and injuries, including medical episodes in which he froze and stopped talking on camera mid-sentence, several falls in the halls of Congress, a broken wrist, and, at several points, the need to use a wheelchair.
