Kentucky GOP Senate candidates get combative on the Fancy Farm stage

Daniel Cameron is the candidate you know and love. Andy Barr is the electable and practical choice. Nate Morris is the one who doesn’t like Mitch McConnell.

So went the arguments Saturday of the three leading Republican candidates running to fill McConnell’s U.S. Senate seat in 2026 on stage and around Fancy Farm, the state’s biggest political speaking event.

Candidates for statewide office use the weekend as both a venue to introduce themselves to the West Kentucky community and a testing ground for their sharp rhetoric in front of a large crowd and a statewide television audience.

Jibes, insults and jokes are a time-honored Fancy Farm tradition, and the candidates had plenty for each other. Most of the barbs, however, were traded in a two-on-one war.

Cameron and Barr roasted Morris mostly on his business failings and alleged liberal leanings in that endeavor. Morris, who has been running as a waste entrepreneur openly “trashing” McConnell, lambasted Cameron and Barr as “puppets” of McConnell.

Morris took that metaphor to a crass place in one of his jokes.

“Andy and Daniel, today might be the perfect day to break some real news. Perhaps you could both show us the seat of your britches so we can finally understand exactly where Mitch’s hand goes in,” Morris said.

Cameron made a comment representative of the attacks he and Barr have been lobbing Morris’ way. He framed Morris as a man sprinting from his business record when he ran Rubicon, a Kentucky company that he led to a public valuation but has since tanked in the stock market.

“Nate will do anything and say anything and run away from his past. He talks tough about deporting illegals, but the only thing he’s ever seen across the border has been his company,” Cameron said.

Barr, for his part, offered a criticism of both Cameron and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, whose absence on the stage was a subject of derision throughout Saturday.

“The liberal media is fawning all over (Beshear), but Americans will soon learn what we Kentuckians already know: He’s as liberal as he is boring. I’d say anyone could beat this guy, but I wouldn’t want to offend Daniel Cameron,” Barr said.

“Good to see you, Daniel, but I think we’re going to keep the tradition alive of Andys beating Daniels in Kentucky.”

Cameron: You know me

Every candidate is saying he’ll fully support President Donald Trump, whose endorsement is a huge boost for a GOP candidate in Kentucky.

But the candidates differed on how they framed their support of the president, why they should be the nominee and what issues they say they’ll focus on as McConnell’s successor and Kentucky’s next senator.

Cameron pitched himself as the familiar choice who’s been involved in West Kentucky and President Trump’s strongest and longest supporter.

Cameron said he is the best-known and the best-liked candidate in West Kentucky, a region unfamiliar with Morris and far removed form Barr’s Central Kentucky-based 6th Congressional District.

“West Kentucky is a part of my DNA. I mean, I’ve gotten to know these people here, and it’s like a family reunion,” Cameron said at a Friday evening event.

With Morris’ more aggressive style conjuring shades of former GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, who gritted out a surprise primary win in 2015 but fell in 2019 in a tight race to Beshear, Cameron sold himself as an antidote – the family man with the million-dollar smile.

Several times over the weekend, he called Morris not just wrong, but rude.

“Nate Morris doesn’t have a message. Nate Morris had a failed company… He can’t talk about his actual record, so he has to choose to pick on an 83-year-old,” Cameron added, referencing his one-time mentor, McConnell.

On the Fancy Farm stage, Cameron also jabbed Morris for explaining his donation to a PAC connected with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. She was a Trump opponent in the 2024 primary who said she would not run at the time.

Morris said his PAC donation was the result of getting “stuck with a bill” for a dinner his wife attended.

“Rather than own up to it, his first thought was to throw his wife under the bus,” Cameron said. “That’s not tough talk. That’s a night in the dog house.”

Just nine months from Kentucky’s May primary, the Fancy Farm crowd is often comprised of professional politicos or political obsessives. Locals attend, of course, but many often pay closer attention to the bingo pavilion 50 yards away.

The crowd was also majority Republican. As such, it probably leaned pro-McConnell.

Morris acknowledged this – noting it was “pissing off a lot of people” at the church-sponsored picnic – and carried on with his anti-McConnell invective.

Perhaps the television audience and potential social media traffic was more top of mind than the crowd before him, as the boos were loudest by far during his speech compared to other Republicans.

That tone was set when event organizers recognized McConnell’s 40-plus years of service in the Senate. All the dozens of people seated on stage rose to clap for the senator, with the notable exception of Morris and staff.

It was clear Morris’ speech would be no different immediately upon taking the podium.

“I’m really confused: I thought this was Fancy Farm. I didn’t realize this was ‘bring your boys to work’ day,” Morris said. All three candidates have some ties to McConnell, but Cameron’s professional history is most closely tied to the longtime senator, and Barr has been raking in donations from many of McConnell’s longtime supporters.

He used a favorite Trump insult (“choked like a dog”) to describe Cameron’s loss to Beshear and he compared McConnell to former Democratic president Joe Biden, whose mental state was the subject of intense criticism on the right.

“A lot of us here at this picnic talked a lot smack about Joe Biden and how old he was and how out of touch he was with the American people. So, why is it that you all get so defensive when I talk about a man who’s older than Biden, just as mentally compromised and holds the same positions as Biden on amnesty, Ukraine funding and his hatred for Trump?”

Though sparring with McConnell was the clear top theme, Morris also had some thoughts for West Kentucky.

On Friday he also lauded a nuclear energy project eyeing Paducah led by Trump ally Peter Thiel, who also happens to have business and investment ties with Morris.

“I admire Peter greatly. He’s one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs, and he picks winners like my friend JD (Vance). I think it’s terrific that we’re attracting smart capital that’s coming to Kentucky,” Morris said. “I think that’s a terrific thing for the people of Kentucky, because it’s going to create jobs.”

Barr: Electable and practical

Throughout his weekend tour of West Kentucky, Barr repeated a predictable line: “They talk about supporting the president, but I’m the only candidate in this race who is actually doing it.”

But after making that point, he often raised a novel argument for why West Kentucky, and the rest of the state should pick him: His political and policy work in his district.

“In some ways (the job) is to cut spending, right? It’s to save our country from bankruptcy. But in some ways, it’s to make sure that when federal dollars are spent that Kentucky gets its fair share of that, and maybe more than its fair share of that. I think this is an advantage I have over these other candidates, because I actually know how this works,” Barr said.

The longtime congressman also made reference to his many landslide wins in the state’s only politically dramatic district — it leans Republican, and only Amy McGrath in 2018 has gotten close to beating him since he won the seat in 2012.

Why is the 6th Congressional District important politically? Unlike other GOP candidates, he raised the specter of Beshear changing his mind on 2028 and running for U.S. Senate in 2026, a prospect Beshear and those around him have long denied.

“Don’t take for granted that he’s just measuring the drapes in the Oval Office. Chuck Schumer is going to try to get him in this race. We need someone who has proven who can win in a swing district.”

Beyond his own primary race, Barr threw in an extra political consideration: If he’s at the top of the ticket, that could pave an easier path to victory for whichever Republican ends up getting the GOP nomination in the 6th District.

“Another major point that I think the President is listening to: Who is the US Senate nominee who can help our nominee in the 6th district the most? If you ask any of (the nominees), they’ll all say Andy Barr.”