A key Kentucky newsletter has reported that Nate Morris, a pro-Trump businessman who announced his candidacy for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) seat last week, is the “front-runner for a new era,” admitting they “may have underestimated Morris in our previous analysis.”
The self-proclaimed “America First conservative” and founder of waste and recycling company Rubicon launched his campaign on Thursday with an announcement on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast and an eye-catching video ad featuring him “taking out the trash” left in his home state by McConnell:
Kentucky Crossroads, a news and opinion blog featuring a podcast hosted by Roger Ford, predicted that the former Senate leader’s legacy will be “swept away” by Morris’s impact should he win the November 2026 election.
McConnell, 83, announced in February that he will not seek reelection next year after holding his Senate seat since 1985.
Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) have also announced their intentions to run for the soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat, but the Sunday newsletter claimed that they are both “McConnell’s Mirror.”
Referring to the launch of Morris’s campaign as the detonation of a “political bombshell,” Ford wrote:
This editorial, therefore, is not merely an update on the race. It is a reconsideration. A reevaluation. A frank and necessary admission that we at Kentucky Crossroads may have underestimated Morris in our previous analysis. What we initially viewed as a long-shot insurgency now appears to be the only authentic, meaningful campaign in a field of career politicians who have long since sold their political souls to the Beltway bureaucracy.
He asserted, “Nate Morris is the candidate Kentucky needs in 2026.”
Barr, a five-term congressman, postures as a “center-right” Republican but is a “political climber whose compass is guided not by conviction, but by calculation,” Ford wrote.
According to the blogger, Barr “built his career with the backing of McConnell’s donor network, and he has never deviated from the script” despite portraying himself as pro-Trump.
Cameron, a former aide to McConnell who was once considered a “rising star” in the Republican Party, lost his bid for governor in 2023 “because he couldn’t alleviate the stench” of being allied with the controversial senator, President Donald Trump said at the time.
Noting several indications, Ford says that Cameron, rather than a “political leader,” is more like a “franchisee of McConnellism,” and noted that both he and Barr stooped to “personal attacks and character assassination,” against Morris, likening this tactic to McConnell’s modus operandi.
According to Ford, both candidates planted coordinated “whisper campaigns” to twist Morris’s narrative.
During his campaign kickoff event with conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Monday, Morris called for a moratorium on immigration to the United States:
The event, held just south of Louisville, was attended by 1,300 “America First patriots,” Morris wrote:
The businessman told the crowd of supporters that both of his Republican primary challengers have “never had a real job.”
“Career politicians have driven our country off a cliff,” he argued.
Morris’s campaign ad features both Barr and Cameron praising McConnell as their “mentor.”
The newsletter continued:
But what makes Morris particularly threatening to the establishment is that he cannot be controlled. He doesn’t owe favors to Mitch McConnell’s network. He hasn’t come up through the ranks of party sycophancy. He doesn’t need to posture as pro-Trump to win favor with the grassroots—he actually believes in the America First vision and is willing to fight for it, even when it alienates the cocktail class in Georgetown or the bureaucrats at the Commerce Department. He is a candidate defined not by inherited political capital, but by his willingness to burn it down.
Let us speak plainly: this is still Donald Trump’s Republican Party. And despite Barr and Cameron’s efforts to claim the Trump mantle, it is Morris who aligns most authentically with the MAGA ethos. He’s not just parroting Trump’s lines—he’s building on them. His campaign announcement came on Trump Jr.’s podcast, signaling a level of insider credibility that neither Barr nor Cameron can claim.
Again referring to previous Kentucky Crossroads commentary on Morris, Ford wrote, “We believe in course correction. And we believe in the power of honest reassessment.”
While the site previously saw the MAGA candidate as a “clever outsider with a catchy video and little political future,” Ford reiterated, “We were wrong.”
“Morris has not only proven himself a serious contender—he has emerged as the most authentic, most principled, and most necessary voice in this race. He offers Kentuckians something that has been missing in our politics for far too long: clarity, courage, and conviction,” he wrote.
“Nate Morris isn’t the long shot anymore. He’s the front-runner for a new era.”
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