Although Hollywood actress Ashley Judd has yet to confirm whether she will run for Senate in Kentucky, the race is already getting heated, as a super PAC in the state has released tweets attacking Senator Mitch McConnell and his family.
According to WFPL News, a liberal Super PAC in the state released some attacks on Twitter, going after Senator Mitch McConnell's wife, who is Chinese. The comments attack his wife, Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, for being Chinese, writing on Valentine's Day:
"This woman has the ear of (Sen. McConnell) - she's his wife. May explain why your job moved to China!"
The group has attacked McConnell previously and has held pretests at his offices and his home before moving to attacking his wife. The online messages linked to a website run website run by conspiracy theorist and radio host Jeff Rense that has written about Sandy Hook school shooting and Holocaust denialism.
Later tweets included, "not many know McConnell's wife is Chinese" as well as "China Premier grateful to McConnell father-in-law/@KYGOPcontributor-4 his role in developing China industry."
Progress Kentucky spokesman Curtis Morrison later came out and said that group leaders do not get a chance to read every Tweet and that a group volunteer was the one who wrote the messages.
"It's not an official statement. It's a Tweet. And we will remove it if it's wrong," he said to WFPL. "I follow Ashley Judd on Twitter and she removed a Tweet the other day, she Tweeted to you Phillip. People make mistakes in Tweets. It happens. Inferring that Elaine Chao is not a U.S. citizen was not our intention."
Other Tweets written by the group included ones about Chao saying "Chinese (money)" is buying state elections, since members of her family donated $80,000 to the Kentucky GOP last year, according to finance records.
Team Mitch campaign manager Jesse Benton came out later and said the comments were "disgusting."
"We just think this kind of race-baiting has absolutely no place in American politics. We think Progress Kentucky should really be ashamed of what's been going out under their name. People should be fired and a public apology should be issued," he says. "I think everybody of good conscience in Kentucky should agree that these sort of attacks should be pushed to the side."
The comments prompted possible candidate and Kentucky Wildcats basketball fan Ashley Judd to come out on Twitter and denounce the words.
"Whatever the intention, whatever the venue, whomever the person, attacks or comments on anyone's ethnicity are wrong & patently unacceptable," the actress wrote on @AshleyJudd.
Chao came to the United States as a child and was the the first Asian-American woman to be appointed to a cabinet-level White House position under President Bush. McConnell has come under fire from some critics in recent years for his relationship to his father-in-law James Chao, who is owner of a shipping company based in New York. Progress Kentucky has come out to try and bring attention on how McConnell's decision making could be influenced by the connections.
"It's a fine line, and that is not our overall message. we've got some Tweets there that shouldn't be there and I'll make sure they come down. We don't want to cross that line," says Morrison. "We're not after anybody because they are an immigrant, but I think it's fair to question whether or not there's a conflict of interest."
The super PAC issued an apology later about the comments and said that speaking about Chao's ethnicity was off base.
