Nate Morris grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with a single mother, an absent father and grandparents who schooled him in Appalachian culture and the ways of the working class.
After an elite education that included a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and an MBA from Oxford, he built an innovative waste management company that attracted money from big-name investors and comparisons to Uber.
Now Morris is positioning himself as the outsider in a Republican Senate primary that will determine whom the party nominates next year to succeed Mitch McConnell. Since launching his campaign in June, Morris has relentlessly attacked McConnell, whose name graces the state GOP’s headquarters, while characterizing his two rivals, Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, as squishy extensions of McConnell’s legacy.
Morris’ biography and anti-establishment pitch, tailored to President Donald Trump’s right-wing populist base, is reminiscent of the formula that sent JD Vance from the private sector to the Senate — and, most recently, to the vice presidency.
“Nate’s life story is strikingly similar” to Vance’s, Charlie Kirk, an influential figure in Trump’s MAGA movement who has campaigned with Morris, wrote last month in a post on X.
Vance, a Yale Law graduate, chronicled his own turbulent childhood — a single mother who struggled with addiction, a “revolving door of father figures” and grandparents who shouldered a heavy load in raising him — in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” He grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and frequently visited family in Jackson, Kentucky. Morris’ family descends from nearby Morgan County.
At 44 and 41, respectively, Morris and Vance are also close in age. They struck up a friendship several years ago, when Morris was running Rubicon, the high-tech trash and recycling company he founded, and Vance was working in Silicon Valley venture capital.
“I sent him an email and I said, ‘Hey, I see you’ve got Kentucky roots, I’d love to connect,’” Morris recalled in an interview this week with NBC News. “He wrote me back pretty quickly.”
They soon learned they had more in common than their bios.
“We connected on everything from politics to technology and, of course, junk food,” Morris said. “I knew he was a real hillbilly when we started talking about what we like to eat. He said, ‘You know, I’m having a hard time finding some of the things I like out here, out West.’”
Morris promptly shipped a couple of cases of Big Red, a regionally popular soda, to Vance in California.
“It’s what we call a trailer treat in Kentucky,” Morris said. “It’s a staple in the hillbilly palate.”
Morris was among the notable names at a fundraiser Vance put together for Trump last year in Ohio. And Vance encouraged Morris to take a look at the Kentucky Senate race, a source familiar with the conversation said.
“JD is a friend, and I’ve been very inspired by his success and what he’s been able to do as a senator and vice president,” Morris said. “He represents the American dream.”
A childhood of challenges
Morris talks frequently of his mother, recalling how she worked multiple jobs and relied on food stamps to raise him. In his interview with NBC News, he also described “typical deadbeat dad issues” — his estranged father’s gambling addiction and delinquent child support.
“My mother had personal struggles and challenges … and she had to deal with a lot of things that a lot of Kentuckians have to deal with, and that really took its toll,” Morris said. “But, you know, we stayed really tight as a family unit between my mom and my grandparents.”
By Morris’ count, 19 of his family members worked at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Louisville. His maternal grandfather served as the local United Auto Workers president and often took Morris with him to the union hall. Those experiences in the 1990s — particularly fallout from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Vance has cited as a formative moment of his youth — helped shape his politics.
“It was members of my family that, when NAFTA came through, lost their jobs because they went to Mexico,” Morris said.
His grandparents, he added, “were Reagan Democrats, but they were very conservative people who always felt that the American workers should be put first.”
Morris wanted to “get away from a lot of the challenges” of his childhood and channeled his energy into high school football. When a severe neck injury sidelined him, he gravitated toward the debate team and Boys Nation, an American Legion program that took him to Washington, D.C., where he met then-President Bill Clinton. After returning to Washington for college, he landed internships with a local congresswoman and, later, with McConnell.
It’s that latter piece of Morris’ biography that his critics wield against him, arguing he’s not the outsider he proclaims to be.
Morris’ Washington connections also led him to a fundraising role with then-President George W. Bush’s re-election bid. At 23, he raised more than $50,000, earning him status as one of the campaign’s youngest “Bush Mavericks.”
Among those impressed was McConnell, who, in a 2004 profile of Morris by the Lexington Herald-Leader, remarked that he was “the kind of kid you remember because he seems to be so sincere and so dedicated to the cause.”
Morris rated further profile treatment a decade later, when he emerged as a key adviser to Kentucky’s other Republican senator, Rand Paul, who was preparing to run for president and whose vision for the future of the Republican Party appeared to be ascendant at the time.
Many thought then that Morris himself would one day run for office in Kentucky. His Senate campaign is no surprise, but his decision to critically center McConnell in it has been notable. His campaign launch video included footage of Barr and Cameron referring to McConnell as a “mentor.”
A statement from Cameron’s campaign described Morris’ McConnell-bashing as “completely fake” while emphasizing his past work for the senator and charging that he has an “authenticity problem.”
Morris, in his interview, countered that his work for McConnell “showed me exactly what I didn’t want to be.”
“I know that seems advantageous for me to say that now, but it’s the truth,” Morris said.
The culture around McConnell “was just around power,” he added. “We all have desires to want to be more and get more. That’s the human component. But there was no element of service. There was no higher purpose. There was no, ‘Let’s make this about Kentucky.’”
A trash-talking 'disrupter'
Addressing a breakfast crowd before last weekend’s annual Fancy Farm picnic, a major political event in western Kentucky, McConnell winked at Morris’ candidacy, wondering “how you’d want to be different from the longest-serving Senate leader in American history.”
Morris arrived at the picnic in a garbage truck — a nod to his business career and to his campaign pledge to “trash” McConnell, Barr and Cameron. On stage, he alluded to all three.
“I thought this was Fancy Farm,” he said. “I didn’t realize this was Bring Your Boys to Work day.”
Loud boos were audible throughout Morris’ remarks.
“The main thing that stood out about his speech was that it was angry and trashy, not that of a statesman at all,” said a Republican operative who was at the event and is not affiliated with anyone in the race.
Barr’s campaign seized on the reaction, issuing a statement for this article asserting that “Andy Barr dominated Fancy Farm.”
“Meanwhile,” the campaign added, “Nate Morris was booed worse than the lone Democrat speaker at Fancy Farm — his performance widely panned as one of the worst ever by a Republican.”
In Morris’ mind, the criticism misses the mark. Why would anyone expect him to change his message because he was at an event stacked with McConnell-aligned GOP insiders?
“When you’re a disrupter, that’s what you’ve got to do,” Morris said in his interview. “You’ve got to take the fight right to the establishment.”
Morris’ campaign is already outpacing his rivals on the Kentucky airwaves, with nearly $1.6 million spent on ads through Wednesday, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. A Barr-aligned group has spent $596,000. Cameron’s campaign has spent less than $3,000.
Nevertheless, Barr, Cameron and their allies have registered Morris as a threat. Both quickly attacked Morris when he entered the race, scrutinizing his past business practices and charging that he has not demonstrated sufficient loyalty to Trump. Cameron’s campaign, for example, has called attention to a contribution that Morris made to a Nikki Haley PAC in 2021. The donation came after Haley had vowed not to challenge Trump in 2024, though she eventually did.
Whoever wins the GOP nomination will be heavily favored to win the Senate seat. Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since awarding Wendell Ford a fourth and final term in 1992.
The primary dynamics are not unlike Vance’s 2022 Senate race in Ohio, where he was initially dismissed as too much of a neophyte. Vance’s opponents also questioned his allegiance to Trump, noting how critical he had been of him years earlier.
Other Republicans, including a former state treasurer and former state party chair, commanded more support from local grassroots activists and Washington insiders. Then-Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., was the first member of Congress to back Vance. And Vance’s friendly relationships with Donald Trump Jr. and Kirk, the MAGA influencer, placed him in good standing in Trump world. Trump himself endorsed Vance weeks before the primary.
Ohio’s 2024 Senate primary played out similarly, with businessman Bernie Moreno riding Trump and Vance endorsements to the GOP nomination over a state senator backed by establishment-friendly Gov. Mike DeWine. Moreno, like Vance, went on to win the general election.
There are common denominators between those winning campaigns and Morris’ bid. He declared his candidacy on Trump Jr.’s podcast and held his first major event with Kirk. Key Vance and Moreno advisers, including strategist Andy Surabian and pollster Tony Fabrizio, are now working with him. Banks and Moreno were the first two senators to endorse him. (Barr also boasts some MAGA world endorsements, including from Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and activist Riley Gaines.)
If and when Trump and Vance will join them remains unclear. In the meantime, Kentucky observers are curious to see if Morris’ Vance-like story and anti-McConnell message can work.
“I think it’s a mixed bag, because I think there’s frustration with McConnell for things he’s done the last maybe five to eight years among the base, but he’s got, he’s in a very long career, and he’s done a lot for not just the state, but for the Republican Party in Kentucky,” said Tres Watson, a former communications director for the Kentucky GOP.
Watson, who is not affiliated with any of the Senate campaigns, hesitated only slightly when asked who he believes is more popular in Kentucky these days: Vance or McConnell.
“I mean, probably JD Vance,” he said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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