(LEX 18) — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell anticipates the upcoming presidential election will be "very, very competitive."
"Rural and small towns have become overwhelmingly Republican and the coasts have become overwhelmingly Democratic," McConnell told the crowd at Commerce Lexington on Wednesday.
He said the race will "in part be a referendum on the two big issues that the American people are most concerned about." And he believes those two issues are inflation and the southern border.
McConnell declined to say who he believes will win the presidency.
Regardless of who wins in November, he said he hopes both parties will find middle ground issues to work on. He points to his support of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill in 2021 as an example of that.
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McConnell was Kentucky's only Republican in Congress to support the bill, which sent billions to Kentucky to complete major infrastructure projects.
"I actually joined Joe Biden in announcing that the Brent Spence Bridge was going to be built and miraculously enough, even without tolls," McConnell said. "As you can imagine, I think, none of my members were too happy to see me standing by Joe Biden up in northern Kentucky."
"But look - I had watched the Obama Administration not be able to put it together. I had a first-row seat during the Trump Administration - my wife was Secretary of Transportation - so I knew they had been unable to put it together," he added. "And so, the question was: when are we going to do this? When are we going to do this? So I ended up being the only member of my party from Kentucky who actually voted for the infrastructure bill."
