I worked at the University of Kentucky Hospital when I was in grad school, as a ward clerk. Fun enough job, but it was also a nowhere job. My wife worked there at the same time, as a nursing assistant, while she was in nursing school. If there’s anything I can tell you about hospitals, it’s that they have hundreds of employees: they are not all doctors and nurses, but pharmacy technicians, X-Ray techs, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, housekeepers, cooks, dining room personnel, admissions employees, lab techs, and probably a dozen others which don’t come to mind at the moment.
And one other thing I can tell you about hospitals: all of those people gossip! If a doctor is f(ornicating) a nurse, it doesn’t stay a secret. If a ward clerk is having an affair with a nursing assistant, it isn’t long before knowledge of that spreads. If a pharmacy tech is homosexual but still closeted, it becomes common knowledge anyway. It’s not just consensual sex between single people; adultery happens!
So, it bugs me that there are so many conspiracy theorists out there pushing the notion that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has died, but it’s being covered up. And while all of those links are from Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — our liberal friends on Bluesky are just as bad.
When someone dies in the hospital, several things have to happen. A physician has to check, and declare the person dead. That gets noted in the patient’s record, and a special morgue cart is brought to the floor, to take the body down to the morgue in as private a manner as possible, but all hospital personnel recognize the morgue cart. The morgue attendant has to log in the name of the deceased, the coroner or medical examiner has to be notified, and called onto duty. And dozens of people on the unit where the patient died would have seen all of this.
This can’t be kept a secret. People will talk, and hospital staffers especially will talk. The nurses who are friends with nurses on other floors will talk to their friends. The housekeeping staff which have to clean the bed and room of the deceased will know, and they’ll talk to each other. The admissions staffers will know when the patient’s status is changed and insurance is notified. A death certificate, which is a public record, will be issued.
With all of the trumped-up interest in the Senator’s health, is it at all reasonable to think that all of this could be kept secret, or that, if someone tried to keep it secret, it wouldn’t be leaked? Senator McConnell is currently out of the hospital and in a rehabilitation facility, as his staff released yesterday. Such facilities tend to be smaller than major hospitals, but they have the same kind of personnel, and they gossip just as much as in any other health care setting. If a patient dies in such a facility, very similar steps have to be taken. This could never be kept secret.
Naturally, Kentucky’s Democrats have been trying to milk this stuff for all it’s worth. Democratic senatorial nominee Charles Booker, a former state Representative from Louisville, has, to no one’s surprise, added his bovine feces.
Then there’s Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY). Under state law, the Governor does not have the authority to appoint a replacement Senator: KRS §118.720 specifies that a special election shall be called by the Governor, and KRS §118.740 specifies that the Governor must give at least 63 days advance notice of the special election, though it does not specify how soon after the vacancy occurs that the special election must be held. Mr Beshear has expressed an interest in challenging that law, and being able to appoint a Senator, basing his position on Section 152 of the state Constitution, which gives him the authority to appoint people to statewide state positions. However, the office of United States Senator is a federal government position.
It’s easy enough to see what he’d do. Senator McConnell’s term ends on January 3, 2027, and he is not running for re-election. Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) won the Republican nomination for the seat, while former state Representative Charles Booker (D-Louisville) secured the Democratic nomination. Mr Beshear would love to appoint Mr Booker to the Senate, perhaps giving him an advantage in the November election, and helping Democrats during the last few months of the current Congress. Nevertheless, if Mr Beshear tried that, it would be immediately challenged in court, and his nominee, regardless of whom it was, would never actually be seated.
Mr Booker was the Commonwealth’s Democratic senatorial nominee in 2022 as well . . . and he got only 38.19% of the vote. Who knows, he might break 40% this year, but he will not win. The left have been playing stupid games with Senator McConnell’s absence, and they absotively, posilutely hate him for denying the odious Merrick Garland a Supreme Court confirmation vote, but they are simply wasting their time, and encouraging the conspiracy theorists.
Whether Senator McConnell returns to the Senate, or even survives until the end of his term, is something known only to the Lord. But the Democrats will not get the Senate seat he occupies.