THE MANAGER OF Amy
McGrath’s Kentucky Senate campaign was behind the recent firing of McGrath’s
potential rival in the Democratic primary, according to Kentucky sources with
knowledge of the unusual development in the high-profile race.
On Friday, WLEX, an NBC
affiliate in Lexington, announced that it had fired Matt Jones as the host of
“Hey, Kentucky,” a show he had launched on the station four years ago. Jones,
Kentucky’s most popular sports radio host, has been openly deliberating a
challenge to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and has been publicly
critical of the early stages of McGrath’s campaign.
Mark Nickolas, McGrath’s
campaign manager, has boasted in Kentucky political circles that he was
responsible for Jones’s firing, according to sources with knowledge of the
situation. His efforts set up a potentially epic campaign blunder: Jones has
been pondering a challenge to McGrath, and the fact that he is no longer
employed by the TV station removes one of his most persuasive reasons not to
run. After all, he no longer has a TV show to lose. Nickolas did not respond to
requests for comment. A spokesperson for McGrath told
the Courier-Journal, a Kentucky newspaper, that the campaign had “nothing
to do with” Jones’s firing.
Jones discussed his firing in
a Monday interview on his radio show, saying he believed Nickolas to be
responsible. “He was the one who pressured to make that happen,” Jones said.
“If not for him, I’d still be hosting the show. And I knew that. It is also
true, because I heard from many people, that he went around bragging about it.
I mean, he went around to people, Amy McGrath’s campaign man, and bragged that
he was the person to do it.”
McGrath burst out of the gate
raising more than $7 million and locking down support from the national
Democratic Party establishment when she launched on July 9, setting up what
looked to be a two-person match between her and McConnell.
But her launch was marred by a
series of missteps, odd claims, and flip-flops, capped by her assertion that
she would have supported Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
That statement contradicted
her position from a year earlier, and she very quickly returned to saying
that she would have opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination.
McGrath’s stumbles created an
opening for a competitive Democratic primary, and a number of contenders,
including Jones, began floating the possibility of challenging her for the
nomination. As Jones inched closer to a decision, observers in the state
speculated that he would ultimately be uninterested in giving up his position
as a popular radio and TV host in exchange for a long-shot bid for the
Senate.
But then, on Friday, Jones
announced that WLEX fired him from the “Hey, Kentucky” show, citing his
involvement in politics and his
forthcoming book, “Mitch, Please! How Mitch McConnell Sold Out Kentucky
(and America Too).” Asked for comment, WLEX directed us to a statement on
its website explaining that the decision to fire Jones was consistent with the
station’s commitment to “fairness across its platforms.” The show was not
canceled, a spokesperson said.
In July, Jones was pulled from
the air temporarily, a move that the station said came after
a complaint from one of the Senate campaigns. (The McConnell campaign
has said that it did not object, and there’s no evidence that they did, which
leaves only the McGrath campaign.) Jones had been critical on air of McGrath’s
launch. Jones is one of several
high-profile hosts who’ve left the network this summer.
MCGRATH SHOT TO fame with
a viral 2018 campaign video that
celebrated her ability to overcome gender discrimination in order to become a
fighter pilot and included no policy positions. Controversially, her ad used
real footage of a target — and presumably the people inside it — being
incinerated by American bombs. It was part of her ultimately unsuccessful bid
to unseat Republican Rep. Andy Barr in Kentucky’s 6th District — her first run
for public office. She outperformed her campaign’s projections in the central
city of Lexington, but Barr held onto strongholds in 17 of the district’s 19
counties. She ended up losing by only 3.2
percentage points, eating into Barr’s 22-point lead over his Democratic
opponent in 2016. Her loss outside Lexington came despite the McGrath
campaign’s heavy emphasis on engaging voters in rural areas, opening offices in
every county in the district.
When McGrath finally
announced earlier this summer that she’d be taking on McConnell, Jones
took the moment to illustrate how, he
thought, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had given
up on Kentucky in his quest to secure a Democratic majority. Her
decision to run was a win for Schumer, who wouldn’t have to expend resources
finding a candidate himself and could count on McGrath to tie up McConnell’s
money even if she wouldn’t actually be able to pull off a win.
“She announces and all the
Democratic presidential candidates — or most of them — endorse her, all the
congressional people endorse her, all the big donors endorse her, and all of a
sudden, she has $5.5 million and the theory is, well, that scares everybody
else out and now we have our nominee. And that’s how it works. And by the way,
that’s how it works in nearly every state,” Jones said on a recent episode of
“The Matt Jones Podcast.” “It should be about the citizens picking who they
like,” he went on. “Instead, what happens is Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer
pick who they like, and there becomes the senators.”
Jones saw an opening for the
Senate seat after McGrath’s bizarre launch last month. “I like her, this is not
a knock on her, but she has become so robotic and become so consulted that I
don’t even know what she stands for anymore. And I think that’s what a lot of
people felt,” he told his podcast co-host.
Nickolas is not a
cookie-cutter Washington campaign consultant. McGrath’s 2018 campaign largely
marked a return
to politics for the longtime Democratic consultant and former Kentucky
political hand and commentator who had withdrawn from the space for much of the
last decade. He suspended his 20-some-year political career in 2011 when he
moved to New York to pursue a master of arts in film and media studies at the
New School. A California native, Nickolas spent about a decade managing and
consulting on Democratic campaigns around the country before launching his
widely read and influential Kentucky political blog, the Bluegrass Report, in
2005. In 2006, Nickolas sued former
Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher for blocking access to his blog on state computers
after Nickolas was quoted in a New York Times article criticizing the
governor.
In the early aughts, he worked
on the gubernatorial and House campaigns of former Rep. Ben Chandler, the
gubernatorial campaign of then-state Rep. Jody Richards, the Senate campaign of
Tim Johnson in South Dakota, and Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential
campaign.
His next task as McGrath’s
campaign manager may be fending off a primary challenge from a candidate he
helped nudge into the race.
Update: August 19, 2019
This article has been updated to include a denial from Amy McGrath’s campaign and a quote from Matt Jones.
This article has been updated to include a denial from Amy McGrath’s campaign and a quote from Matt Jones.
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