Mitch McConnell Called Out, Put On Notice After Herschel Walker Loss

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is in the hot seat again with members of his own party.

Following the loss of Trump-backed GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia, the head of the state party took McConnell and other top Republican leaders to task for refusing to do more to help Walker overcome a major fundraising deficit.

“Tuesday was a tough day in Georgia. Herschel was massively outspent, maybe 3 to 1 in a four week period of time and still held his own,” Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer noted in an email the day after the election.

Politico noted further:

He went on to refer to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s comments about candidate quality as “unhelpful” — to the degree it was viewed as a dig at Walker, who McConnell endorsed — and bemoaned the limited financial support from the NRSC for the Georgia runoff.

“We used our RNC transfer dollars for the ground game and were forced to raise money from entirely within the state for our critically important mail program. Two weeks out, we were $2.5 million short when I sent what was for me an embarrassing email begging the other state parties for help,” he added, according to the Georgia Star.

That said, Shafer did hold up Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for praise.

“Ronna spent most of Thanksgiving week haranguing United States Senators and her major donors asking them to help us, and she came through in a big way,” he wrote. “She alone filled $1.9 million of the shortfall. THANK YOU.”

He also defended her against attacks from some Republicans after the party failed to perform better during the midterms.

“I feel for Ronna in the sense that I have spent much of my four years as Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party dealing with various requests and demands that I use my platform to denounce other Republicans,” Shafer wrote in a November 26 email in the same thread that Politico obtained.

He added that the Georgia runoff “does not grip the national imagination the way it did two years ago because there is no way for us to get to 51.”