Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) will face former Democratic state Rep. Charles Booker in the race to replace outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the U.S. Senate.
The Associated Press called the Republican primary race for Barr at 7 p.m. ET, an hour after polls closed. Barr won with 60.5 percent of the vote to 30.8 percent for the next closest rival, former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
On the Democratic side, Booker—who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Senate nomination in 2020 before winning the primary in 2022—won with 46.8 percent of the vote. His closest rival, 2020 Democratic nominee Amy McGrath, has trails with 35.8 percent of the vote. The race was called at 9:41 p.m. ET.
The primary marks the first time in 16 years that the state has seen a fully open race for a Kentucky Senate seat. The last such primary took place in 2010, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) won his first election to Congress.
But the seat specifically held by McConnell—an eight-term political juggernaut who led Senate Republicans throughout the 2010s and 2020s—has not seen a fully open primary since 1972, when former Sen. Walter “Dee” Huddleston (D-Ky.) won an open primary for the seat, the first of Huddleston’s two Senate election victories.
McConnell, then 42 years old, was first elected to the seat in 1984, unseating the incumbent Huddleston.
Since his seventh reelection to the Senate in 2020, McConnell, now 84, had faced growing scrutiny over his health, particularly in the wake of public incidents in which the Republican leader appeared to freeze.
McConnell had served as the leader of the Republican Senate conference since January 2007. Before the start of the current 119th Congress, he agreed to step down from the role, giving his blessing to then-Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who has served as majority leader since January 2025.
By Joseph Lord
