A Republican candidate for Senate on Monday compared GOP leader Mitch McConnell to Russia, saying they "should both stop interfering with elections outside their jurisdictions."
"McConnell should not be in the U.S. Senate, let alone be the Republican Majority Leader. He is a Swamp captain," coal magnate Don Blankenship, who is running for Senate in West Virginia, said in a statement released Monday, according to Politico.
"West Virginians are aware that McConnell cannot vote in their election," he continued. "They want him to mind his own business and do his job. A job he has not done now for over 30 years. Balance the budget Mitch and stay out of West Virginia."
Blankenship, who spent a year in prison after an explosion in his Upper Big Branch Mine killed 38 miners in Kentucky, was recently attacked in a TV ad from "Mountain Families PAC," a recently established super PAC that paid close to $1 million in the past week to GOP consulting firms that have worked closely with the McConnell-supporting super PAC the Senate Leadership Fund.
“The media, McConnell and others also like to spread the rumor that my candidacy is akin to that of [Alabama Senate candidate] Roy Moore. This is nonsense. Roy Moore’s accusers were women and teenage girls," he said. "My accusers are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I was imprisoned for a misdemeanor based on false charges and a political prosecution."
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