Aides to the Kentucky senator say the McConnell campaign will hold no events, take no questions and reuse the same picture on every mailer.
Mitch McConnell's staff announced a presidential campaign using a single years-old thumbs-up photograph and a nineteen-word press release. Aides say the campaign will contest nineteen states without visiting any of them. The running mate is a second photograph.
Mitch McConnell's staff announced a presidential campaign on Thursday. The entire launch package was one photograph of the senator giving a thumbs up, taken several years ago.
The press release ran nineteen words. It did not say which election. It did not include a date, a venue, or a phone number that connects to a human being.
Finally. A campaign with discipline.
"The senator's position is the photograph," said campaign manager Dale Ferrick, who took no follow-up questions and left through a side door of a rented storefront in Louisville. "Anything beyond the photograph is media speculation."
Ferrick confirmed the operation will contest nineteen states without visiting any of them. Staff describe this as a cost-saving measure and a moral stance.
Now watch the vultures circle. The same reporters who spent months writing cryptic little dispatches about a man who owes them nothing suddenly want access. Access. Since when did the American right require its leaders to be visible?
"Every other candidate is out there talking constantly," said deputy communications director Marla Hoyt. "Ours isn't. Ask yourself which one is being controlled by consultants."
Kentucky reporters noted the senator skipped the state's annual ham breakfast, an event he attended for decades. Ferrick called the absence "a scheduling choice made at the strategic level." The campaign has no plans to attend a breakfast in any state.
The strongest ticket in a generation
Ferrick then announced the running mate. It is a second photograph, this one showing the senator seated, and it will be released closer to the election.
Yard signs shipped Thursday afternoon. They carry the thumbs up, cropped tight, with no slogan underneath, because a slogan is a promise and a promise is a hostage.
Meanwhile the other campaigns hold rallies. They shake hands. They answer questions from a press corps that hates them, night after night, like beaten dogs begging at the table.
One thumb. Up. Held steady for years while lesser men chased cameras. And they call that a mystery.
I call it leadership.
