Tea Party-backed businessman Matt Bevin said Tuesday that his primary opponent Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “pretends to be” a conservative in order to win reelection.
Bevin made the comment on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” as Kentucky voters head to the polls to vote in the state’s primary. Polls have shown McConnell with a large lead over Bevin going into Tuesday’s vote.
“He is not a conservative,” Bevin said about McConnell. “He just pretends to be one every six years in order for him to trick his way back into the U.S. Senate. The voters of Kentucky are becoming weary of this. “
Bevin said conservatives don’t vote to bail out Wall Street, vote for amnesty or vote to raise the debt ceiling every time—all of which are votes Bevin said McConnell took.
{mosads}Asked if Bevin would campaign for the Republican nominee for the general election, he said, “We’re going to cross this bridge after tonight.”
He then suggested he might remove himself from the race altogether.
“I have never in my life worked for a Democrat or a Republican,” he said. “I don’t intend doing that anytime in the foreseeable future. I certainly don’t intend to do that in this race.”
McConnell, who is serving his fifth term in the Senate, is expected to easily win Tuesday’s primary, after recent polls have suggested he’s held a significant lead. A Bluegrass Poll released over the weekend, for instance, found 55 percent of likely Republican voters support McConnell, while just over a third said they back Bevin.
Meanwhile, the race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is vying to take McConnell’s seat, is already beginning.
The latest Bluegrass poll found that the race between Grimes and McConnell is in a statistical dead heat.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported Monday that two independent expenditure groups that support McConnell have already bought $5.2 million in ad time for the weeks after the primary.