Rep. Andy Barr‘s (R-KY) run for U.S. Senate is being hit with a $2 million negative advertising campaign at the hands of the Club For Growth, just as Barr released his first seven-figure TV ad spree of his own.
The Republican primary to replace Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate is heating up, and also includes former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who has consistently led in polling, and entrepreneur Nate Morris — all battling over who is most closely aligned to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. Trump has not yet endorsed anyone in the race.
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The three candidates have also consistently attempted to distance themselves from McConnell. The dynamics between each of the three Republican front-runners and Trump and McConnell have become the center of the election cycle’s advertisements.
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Barr launched a seven-figure TV advertisement on Monday, touting his working relationship with Trump. Barr released two video ads focused on his relationship to the president, called “Good Friend” and “Just Getting Started.”
The shorter, 15-second ad shows a clip of Trump calling Barr a “good friend of all of ours.” Barr spoke about his efforts to support Trump’s agenda in the U.S. House on both economic and social issues in the longer, 30-second ad.
“I helped Trump deliver the largest tax cut in American history, keep men out of girls’ sports, and fund the largest deportation we’ve ever seen,” Barr said in the ad.
However, a $2 million negative advertisement blitz against Barr swiftly followed his own TV ad premiere.
Win It Back PAC, an affiliate of the conservative Club for Growth Action, a conservative-leaning group that supports candidates like Rand Paul (R-KY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), has invested an additional $2 million ad campaign into the Kentucky primary, bashing Barr as a “Trump-hater.” The ad campaign was first reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader‘s Austin Horn.
The PAC’s advertisement called “Groomed” shows a clip of Barr calling McConnell his “mentor” and points to contributions made to his campaigns from 2010-2022 by McConnell and former anti-Trump Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. The group launched a website campaigning against Barr in July and released two previous advertisements against the candidate.
Alex Bellizzi, spokesman for the Barr campaign, denounced the PAC’s ad and told the Washington Examiner that “no amount of lies will prop up their desired candidate,” who he described as a, “woke CEO whose polling numbers are in the trash.” This likely refers to Morris, but the PAC has not endorsed a candidate as of yet.
Each of the three major candidates has used rhetoric seeking to align themselves closely with the MAGA President. Morris calls himself a “pro-Trump businessman and conservative outsider” on his campaign website, while Cameron says on his website that he was the “first elected leader in Kentucky to endorse President Trump” in January 2023.
A Public Opinion Strategies poll released Saturday, tied to the pro-Barr Keep America Great PAC, shows Cameron in the lead with support from 37% of likely Kentucky Republican voters, but has Barr at 29%. According to a Barr spokesperson, this is a 10-point surge. The poll has Morris at 8% support. Cameron has led by double-digits in previous surveys.
Both the Cameron and Morris campaigns have rejected the Public Opinion Strategies poll.
“Daniel Cameron is dominating the field. Even Andy Barr’s fake poll agrees,” Taylor Zanazzi, the Cameron Campaign Manager, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Despite the millions spent attacking Daniel by Nate and the establishment bankrolling Barr, Kentucky voters see right through it.”
The Morris campaign also called the pro-Barr PAC-affiliated poll fake.
“Leave it to the Super PAC for Mitch McConnell’s handpicked puppet to release a fake poll from the very same never-Trump polling firm that spent the entire 2024 GOP presidential primary releasing fake polls claiming President Trump was losing. Team Barr knows full well that Nate is surging, which is why they spend so much time and money desperately lying about him,” Conor McGuinness, a spokesman for the Morris campaign, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
But the Barr campaign remains confident in the recent polling data.
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“Kentucky republicans are uniting behind a proven winner, America First Warrior, and the only candidate in this race with a record of working with President Trump to deliver for Kentucky,” Bellizzi said.
The Senate primary Election Day is still months out, set for May 19, 2026. The general election is still over one year away, set for November 3, 2026. State Rep. Pamela Stevenson is the likely Democratic primary front-runner in the Senate race.