Senator Mitch McConnell has yet to show his face in the halls of Congress, and the deadline for Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to call a special election is fast approaching.
The 84-year-old Republican senator has not made a public appearance in weeks, ever since he was rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious at his Washington, D.C., home on June 14. Since then, McConnell’s office has refused to provide any meaningful updates on the exact state of the senator’s health, the reason for his extended hospitalization, or if and when he plans to return to Capitol Hill.
Beshear has until this Monday, August 3, to call a special election so Kentucky voters can choose a new senator in time for the midterms. Under Section 152 of the Kentucky state Constitution, a special election to fill a vacant seat must be called at least three months ahead of the vote—and since the midterm elections are set for November 3, Monday is exactly that three-month cutoff.
Kentucky’s law on Senate vacancies, House Bill 622, which was passed in 2024, is still legally untested. It eliminated the governor’s ability to appoint interim replacements for vacant U.S. Senate seats and mandated that any vacancy be filled by a special election, but as there are several competing legal provisions, it’s not yet clear what would happen in the courts.
Although Kentucky traditionally votes Republican at the federal level, Beshear, a Democrat, has been elected twice as the state’s top dog. A special election might just give Democrats a chance to send another one of their own to the Senate.
Beshear has repeatedly called on McConnell to justify his absence from Congress or to step down in time for Kentucky voters to choose a replacement. If the senator does not retire earlier, he will leave the Senate at the end of his term in December.
“I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition. If the Senator is unable to respond for either of those or other conditions, consider this letter a demand for his Senate staff to be honest and transparent with the people of Kentucky,” Beshear wrote Monday in a letter to McConnell obtained by CNN.
McConnell’s office has only released two unconvincing photos of the senator alongside his wife, Elaine Chao, since his hospitalization. The latest statement from the senator’s office, released on July 27, said that McConnell would not yet be returning to his legislative duties in Congress, but he was “looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky.”
McConnell’s ongoing absence has caused a stir among D.C. lawmakers and political commentators alike—from rumors that the Kentucky senator was brain-dead to pointed questions from MAGA-aligned allies, to a missing-person poster taped outside the Russell Senate Office Building.
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