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Mitch McConnell enters Senate chamber
The Republican, who announced Thursday that he will not run for reelection in 2026, has a record of opposition to LGBTQ+ equality.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who announced Thursday that he will not seek reelection in 2026, will leave with an egregiously anti-LGBTQ+ record.
McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, has been elected to the Senate seven times, making him the longest-serving senator from the state. He has been elected nine times to lead the Senate Republican conference between 2006 and 2024, as majority leader or minority leader, depending on the party makeup of the body, so he is the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history. He has suffered health problems and falls in recent years, and he announced last year that he would step down from leadership. He made the announcement about not seeking reelection in a speech to his fellow senators on his 83rd birthday.
McConnell has a history of low scores, mostly zeroes, in the Human Rights Campaign Congressional Scorecard, which measures support for LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. Senate and House. He voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and inclusive hate-crimes legislation. He also used his leadership position to block much progressive legislation — preventing the Equality Act from coming to a Senate vote, for instance.
He helped reshape the Supreme Court. In 2016, as majority leader, he refused to let the Senate consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the high court to fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. It was the last year of Obama’s presidency, and McConnell said the position should be left open for the next president to fill. When Donald Trump became president the following year, he nominated conservative Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed by the Senate.
But then in 2020, at the end of Trump’s first term, he allowed the Senate to vote on the president’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative, to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court. McConnell had pushed for Coney Barrett’s nomination, and the Senate confirmed her. With another Trump justice, Brett Kavanaugh, that gave the court a 6-3 conservative majority, leading to the overturning of abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade in 2022.
McConnell supported most of Trump’s agenda, at least in his first term, but the two have sometimes clashed. McConnell condemned the insurrection of January 6, 2021, by Trump supporters who tried to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote for Joe Biden, and he has supported Ukraine in its war with Russia. In 2023, Trump referred to McConnell’s wife, Taiwan-born Elaine Chao, by a racist nickname several times, even though she had been his secretary of Transportation. Trump also said McConnell should be removed as the Republican Senate leader. The two men did not speak for a time, “but McConnell ultimately endorsed Trump as the Republican nominee in 2024 and made clear he is not planning to oppose most of the president’s agenda,” The Washington Postnotes.
Recently, McConnell has shown some opposition to Trump, voting against his nominees for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard; and Health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He did vote for other Trump nominees for Cabinet and other positions that require Senate confirmation, including his Thursday vote for Kash Patel as FBI director.
In voting against Kennedy, known for his anti-vaccine stances, McConnell said he was not convinced Kennedy was the best person for the job. McConnell is a survivor of polio, a disease that has been eradicated by vaccines. Trump then questioned whether McConnell had actually had polio and later said McConnell was “not equipped mentally” to be a Republican leader.
McConnell, in speaking to the Senate Thursday, also stood up for Congress’s power over federal spending, which has been usurped by Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk.
“I assure my colleagues I will depart with great hope for the endurance of the Senate as an institution,” he said, according to the Post. “There are any number of reasons for pessimism, but the strength of the Senate is not one of them.”
“The Senate is still equipped for work of great consequence, and to the disappointment of my critics, I’m still here on the job,” he added.
Two Kentucky Republicans, U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, said they intend to run for McConnell’s seat. There has been talk of popular Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, an LGBTQ+ ally, making a run, but his spokesman Eric Hyers posted on X that Beshear is not a candidate.
