Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell claims his primary challenger, Matt Bevin, lied about participating in a cockfighting rally, POLITICO reported.
Allison Moore, a spokesperson for McConnell, issued a statement on Friday after Bevin claimed to not have known he was speaking at the rally.
"Matt Bevin's cockfighting episode will go down in history as one of the most disqualifying moments in Kentucky political history," Moore said in the statement. "Twenty years from now, we will all remember the time when the East Coast con-man thought so little of Kentuckians that he pathologically lied to us about absolutely everything until an undercover camera caught him red-handed at a cockfighting rally."
A local news report said Bevin was the second speaker at the rally held on March 29. The report also said the first speaker referred to the event as the "sole purpose of legalizing gamecock fight at the state level."
McConnell's news release also uses a quote from a local news report in which Bevin said "I was the first person to speak and then I left."
Though the report does not quote Bevin talking to the crowd about cockfighting, it does include a comment he made about legalizing it afterwards.
"I support the people Kentucky exercising their right because it is our right to decide what it is we want to do and not the federal government's. Criminalizing behavior, if it's part of the heritage of this state, is in my opinion a bad idea," he said.
Cockfighting is illegal in Kentucky, POLITICO said.
Following McConnell's accusations, the Bevin campaign released a statement, brushing off the incident as a "rehash of an old story."
"This is just a rehash of an old story," the statement read. "Primary voters will have a choice on May 20th between a veteran, small business owner, father of nine who will fight for our conservative values in Matt Bevin, or more of the same old liberal policies from Mitch McConnell. Since McConnell can't defend his record, all he can do is try to make his opponent look worse. Instead, we should be addressing the core issue - that the federal government has gotten too big, too intrusive, and needs to be reined in."
