Former President Barack Obama endorsed Charles Booker on Sunday, two days before Election Day, giving the Democrat a late-stage boost in a Kentucky Senate race that has been treated as a heavy Republican hold. Booker, who is running against Republican Rep. Andy Barr to succeed Mitch McConnell, said he was humbled and honored by the endorsement.
Obama said he was proud to support Booker for the U.S. Senate and argued that sending him to Washington would give working families across the Commonwealth a leader who understands their struggles. The endorsement matters because Booker is trying to turn a race that Cook Political Report still considers solid Republican into something closer than it has looked for most of the campaign.
Booker has leaned into that argument, telling CBS News that McConnell built a career leveraging Kentucky into one of the most powerful positions in Washington and that flipping the state would flip the U.S. Senate. He also said, “A lot of it has been encouraging people to pay attention and to know that there is a race here, that it is competitive, and that there is a path to win.”
The campaign’s optimism runs into a harder reality. Cook Political Report still sees the contest as solid Republican, and Booker’s own history shows the climb he faces: in 2022, he challenged Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul and lost by nearly 24 points. Barr has dismissed him as a “socialist experiment” and “the most extreme candidate in the history of our state,” while President Trump endorsed Barr and visited Kentucky last month, telling voters at an Oct. 17 rally in Highland Heights that Barr “has been an amazing congressman” and “He'll be one of the great US senators.”
There are signs Booker’s camp wants voters to believe the race is moving. More than 267,000 individuals had cast ballots by Friday, and at least 95,645 registered Democrats had already voted compared with 83,726. Booker has also picked up support from nearly two dozen Democratic endorsements from major figures, including a group of senators who backed him on Saturday. The immediate question is whether that late consolidation, plus Obama’s name at the top of the ticket-shaped push, is enough to move a race that still begins from behind.
Election Day is next, and Booker now has one of the strongest validators in Democratic politics arguing that Kentucky can send him to Washington. Whether that endorsement can change the arithmetic before the votes are counted is the part that will be answered soonest.
