Ashland Daily Independent. May 30, 2024.
Editorial: McConnell is right
Kentucky’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell, paid a morning visit to Boyd County Tuesday to stop by Pathways and then address a Northeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce event at UK King’s Daughters Medical Center.
Late last week, the chamber put the word out that the planned visit was nearly full and few, if any, seats were available.
McConnell mostly spoke of foreign affairs including recent passage of a package about aid to Ukraine and Israel. This was one of the few acts of Congress to make it to the President’s desk this year.
We don’t count the naming of various post offices as meaningful legislation.
McConnell also spoke of the University of Kentucky absorbing KDMC as a big positive after the closure of Bellefonte Hospital. He’s right.
Before the Chamber event, McConnell paid a visit to Pathways Residential House in Boyd County. That is a 25-bed facility for women that helps them kick the addiction problem that has plagued our region for far too long. It was funded through the CAREER Act which McConnell helped guide through the Senate in 2018. We supported that legislation nearly six years ago.
McConnell didn’t say if he plans to run for re-election next year. We suspect he won’t, which will open up a slew of candidates to replace him. If readers ever watch C-SPAN 2, they’d wonder why anyone would want to be a senator.
We said in a recent editorial, McConnell is an old-school, shoe-leather politician who likes to make laws and funnel money to the Bluegrass State. He’s 82 years old and a polio survivor. He still gets around the Commonwealth to meet his constituents.
In recent years, he has fallen out of favor with some of his colleagues. Too many Washington politicians have an eye and ear toward the next election and nothing else except fundraising. McConnell and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul often are on the different side of Senate votes.
This newspaper hasn’t always agreed with McConnell, but we agree with his recent support of foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. We’re not sure how many more times we’ll see him in our area. We hope and expect he’ll remain influential in passing meaningful legislation in the remainder of this term.
END