AP PHOTO/RON EDMONDS
KENTUCKY’S
KING
McConnell looks like a guy who
would foreclose on your farm. The
senator has a net worth of somewhere between $9.2 million and
$36.4 million, according to his
latest financial disclosure filings.
Yet he has so much rural authenticity that small-town voters mistake him for one of their own.
McConnell’s communion with
the working class isn’t the result
of any intuitive genius. He studied
farmers and coal miners for years,
cultivating an understanding of
the issues and anxieties that dominate rural Kentucky. He learned
to hang.
“He can get down on the level
with anybody,” says Mary Canter, who has worked for a decade
at the Graves County Republican
Party office. “He can come down
to just the average John IQ.” Although Canter has met McConnell
many times, she can’t say where
he lives. His credibility is so well
established that his background
isn’t questioned.
Even in his early years campaigning for Cook, McConnell
made it a point to respect the local language. Yarmuth remembers
getting lost in Appalachia with
McConnell. When they finally
stopped and asked for directions,
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
“It’s right back there,” the man
told them, down “the road a couple hollers.”
Yarmuth, a lifelong Louisvillian,
recalls asking the man, “How loud
the hollers?”
But McConnell understood,
quickly ended the interaction and
told Yarmuth to get in the car. In
Kentucky, a holler or hollow is an
address — a nook or cranny in a
mountain where a family builds a
home. In locales without official
roads or house numbers, “the next
In his first
Senate race
in 1984,
McConnell
ran a now
notorious ad
against his
opponent,
Walter
Huddleston
(above),
attacking
him for
missing a few
votes while
giving paid
speeches.