Barr: ‘I have the experience’

Congressman Andy Barr, who is run­ning for Mitch McConnell’s U.S. Senate seat in an open pri­ma­ry race, told an audi­ence in Winchester last Saturday (March 3) that what sets him apart from the oth­er can­di­dates is that he won’t need any on-the-job training.

“Unlike my oppo­nents, I can hit the ground run­ning,” he said.

Barr has 14 years of expe­ri­ence in Congress, and, he point­ed out, he has rela­tion­ships with President Donald J. Trump and mem­bers of his administration.

Just the day before his cam­paign stop in Clark County, he said, he spoke with Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and right before the State of the Union speech on Feb. 24, he talked to Secretary of Commerce Harold Lutnick. He said he works with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “all the time” on eco­nom­ic policy.

“They talk about sup­port­ing this pres­i­dent, but I’m doing it every day in Congress,” Barr said, refer­ring to oth­er pri­ma­ry can­di­dates. “They can say what­ev­er they want about being a Trump man …. I was the chair­man of his campaign.”

“My oppo­nents talk about the Save Democracy Act. I vot­ed for it. They talk about the Big Beautiful Bill. I helped write it. That’s the dif­fer­ence,” he said.

Barr, a Lexington lawyer, was first elect­ed to the 6^th District seat in the U.S. House in 2012, when he defeat­ed the incum­bent, Democrat Ben Chandler. He is a senior mem­ber of the House Financial Services Committee and the chair­man of the Financial Institutions and Monetary Police Subcommittee, which over­sees the Federal Reserve and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agencies.

There are 12 can­di­dates in the Republican pri­ma­ry, but three top con­tenders, based on polling and the amount of mon­ey they’ve raised. Former Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor in 2023, has led in the polls. Rubicon Technologies founder Nate Morris is tout­ing his ties to Trump’s cir­cle — he’s friends with Donald J. Trump Jr. and Vice President J.D. Vance, and he’s received fund­ing from bil­lion­aire Elon Musk, but he trails both Barr and Cameron in the polls. Barr, though, holds a com­mand­ing lead in fundrais­ing, with $6.5 mil­lion in cash at the end of last year, accord­ing to Federal Elections Commission records, and he has got­ten endorse­ments from 115 of his col­leagues in Congress and many state and local officials.

All three can­di­dates are angling for an endorse­ment from Trump.

The three had close ties to McConnell, but are dis­tanc­ing them­selves from the once-pow­er­ful Senate major­i­ty leader because McConnell blamed Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021 storm­ing of the U.S. Capitol by his sup­port­ers, and he has some­times vot­ed against the pres­i­dent in Congress.

Barr’s local “meet and greet” was attend­ed by about 50 peo­ple at the Hannah McClure Cardinal Community Center. He was intro­duced by state Sen. Greg Elkins, R‑Winchester, who has endorsed his candidacy.

“We have a man behind me who already knows his way around D.C., already knows the peo­ple, who already has the rela­tion­ships, and that’s how you get things done,” Elkins said.

During his speech, Barr said lit­tle about his pri­ma­ry oppo­nents, but cas­ti­gat­ed Democrats, paint­ing the par­ty as far-left radicals.

“We’ve got a group … that wants to make this coun­try into some­thing we don’t rec­og­nize,” he remarked, say­ing that Democrats want to “open bor­ders,” “rip off tax­pay­ers,” “replace reli­gion with the state,” “replace free enter­prise with social­ism,” and “repu­di­ate the found­ing prin­ci­ples of our country.”

Barr said peo­ple are flee­ing from total­i­tar­i­an regimes to come to America, but in New York City, the may­or and a con­gress­woman are “com­mu­nists.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not com­mu­nists. They are among the tiny minor­i­ty of the par­ty who iden­ti­fy as demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists, a phi­los­o­phy that affirms polit­i­cal democ­ra­cy and blends a pri­vate mar­ket econ­o­my with greater gov­ern­ment involve­ment in health care, edu­ca­tion, infra­struc­ture, ener­gy, and oth­er sectors.

Barr said Democrats want to “scare peo­ple with … cli­mate change,” “ratio­nal­ize ter­ror­ism” in Gaza and anti-semi­tism on col­lege cam­pus­es, and weak­en the U.S. mil­i­tary with diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion (DEI) policies.

The can­di­date has got­ten con­sid­er­able crit­i­cism for an anti-DEI tele­vi­sion ad in which he says the abbre­vi­a­tion stands for “dumb, evil indoc­tri­na­tion,” and ends with: “It’s not a sin to be white. It’s not against the law to be male. And it shouldn’t be dis­qual­i­fy­ing to be a Christian.”

Barr didn’t men­tion the ad dur­ing his speech to the all-white crowd in Winchester, or the arrest of a Richmond man the day before the speech for break­ing into and van­dal­iz­ing the candidate’s cam­paign head­quar­ters in Lexington.

He tout­ed his endorse­ment by Riley Gaines, a for­mer University of Kentucky swim­mer who is now an anti-trans­gen­der activist, and said one rea­son he’s run­ning is to “enforce san­i­ty and com­mon sense, to keep bio­log­i­cal men out of our daugh­ters’ lock­er rooms.”

Barr said he intro­duced a bill in the Senate that would require any school dis­trict or insti­tu­tion of high­er edu­ca­tion that does not com­ply with the president’s exec­u­tive order on trans­gen­der pol­i­cy in schools to lose all fed­er­al funding.

He said that if Democrats take con­trol of the Senate, “it’s impeach­ment, impeach­ment, impeach­ment every day.”

The two Senate Democratic can­di­dates he men­tioned were Amy McGrath, the for­mer fight­er pilot he defeat­ed in a House race, and for­mer state leg­is­la­tor Charles Booker, a pro­gres­sive whom he called the “lead­ing can­di­date” and the “Mamdani of Kentucky,” whose own polling shows him tied with “the garbage guy,” Morris. And the poll shows Cameron with a sin­gle-dig­it lead over Booker.

“I’m the only can­di­date in his poll with a dou­ble-dig­it lead,” he added.

“Don’t take a risk. Nominate the guy who’s a proven fight­er,” Barr said.

After Barr’s talk, Elkins and his wife, Kim, pre­sent­ed him with a framed copy of a Senate res­o­lu­tion hon­or­ing Tatum Dale, Barr’s for­mer deputy chief of staff and cam­paign man­ag­er, who died of an ill­ness on Dec. 24, 2025. Dale, who Barr called “the heart and soul of my team,” had worked for Barr since his first con­gres­sion­al cam­paign and had served in his Washington, D.C. office since 2013.