A wealthy Kentucky business executive on Thursday entered the race to succeed Mitch McConnell in the United States Senate, casting himself as the only political outsider in the field and an unwaveringly loyal supporter of President Trump.
The executive, Nate Morris, announced his candidacy on a podcast hosted by the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. The race is expected to be among the biggest and most expensive Republican primary battles of 2026.
While he is not as well known as two other Republican candidates — Representative Andy Barr of Kentucky, and Daniel Cameron, a former state attorney general — Mr. Morris can use the wealth he accumulated as a founder of a successful waste and recycling company to quickly introduce himself to voters.
“You’ve got two McConnellites that owe everything to Mitch McConnell versus the outside business guy that’s running as the MAGA candidate,” Mr. Morris said in an episode of “Triggered,” the podcast hosted by the president’s son, that was released on Thursday. “I think that contrast is going to be very, very striking to Kentuckians all over the state because they’ve had enough. They’ve had enough of Mitch.”
Mr. Morris, Mr. Barr and Mr. Cameron are competing for support among Republican primary voters who have soured on Mr. McConnell, 83, a political titan in Kentucky who announced this year that he would not seek re-election after serving for more than 40 years in the Senate. They are also jockeying for the president’s coveted endorsement in a state that Mr. Trump won by 30 percentage points in 2024.
On the Democratic side, State Representative Pamela Stevenson, an Air Force veteran and the minority leader of the Kentucky House, is also running for Mr. McConnell’s seat. She is expected to be a major underdog in the deep-red state.
Mr. Cameron, who lost a race for Kentucky governor in 2023, and Mr. Barr, who was elected to Congress in 2012, responded to Mr. Morris’s entry into the race by releasing statements attacking his pro-Trump credentials. Mr. Cameron called Mr. Morris “a globalist who dons a MAGA hat.” Mr. Barr said Mr. Morris “can’t run from all the liberal trash in his past.”
Mr. Morris was once an intern for Mr. McConnell and held a fund-raiser for him in 2014.
But Mr. McConnell has found himself increasingly isolated in the party he once led in the Senate. He has bluntly criticized Mr. Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine and voted against three of the president’s cabinet nominees — Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.
Mr. Morris describes himself as a ninth-generation Kentuckian who was raised in a union household by a single mother. On his website, he says his greatest inspiration as a child was his grandfather, who was the head of a local auto union. In high school, a fractured spine derailed Mr. Morris’s promising football career, and he began to focus on other interests, like politics.
He was an intern for Representative Anne Northup of Kentucky, a Republican who left Congress in 2007, as well as for Mr. McConnell. Mr. Morris also worked in the White House’s homeland security office. In 2004, he was one of President George W. Bush’s young fund-raisers.
In 2008, he entered the garbage business as a founder of Rubicon, a company that connects businesses with waste haulers and recyclers. Mr. Morris, who has called Rubicon the “Uber of waste,” says on his website that he helped to oversee an expansion of the company to nearly $700 million in annual revenue, with operations in 50 states and 20 countries. He stepped down as chief executive in 2022, less than two months after the company went public.
In an introductory video released by his campaign, Mr. Morris plays up his experience in the trash business, wearing an orange vest and riding on the back of a garbage truck emblazoned with the name “Nate’s DC Swamp Cleanup Services.”
As a cutout of Mr. McConnell is shown being tossed in a garbage can, Mr. Morris says that he is a “Trump America-first conservative, and I’m here to take out the trash.”
On his campaign website, Mr. Morris says he opposes “all forms of amnesty” for undocumented immigrants and wants to end birthright citizenship. He says he supports Mr. Trump’s tariffs and wants to cut federal funding for schools and universities that “try to indoctrinate our kids with woke propaganda.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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