WASHINGTON — Kentucky’s most powerful Republican politician Tuesday suggested taking down the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from his state’s Capitol.

The declaration by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s senior senator, came as officials in several states were moving to remove the battle flag of the Confederacy from positions that suggest official endorsement. The gunman who allegedly massacred nine in a black South Carolina church this week used the flag, among other symbols, to express his adherence to white supremacy.

“With regard to my own state, we curiously enough have a statue of Jefferson Davis in the Capitol in Frankfort,” McConnell said. “Davis’ sole connection to Kentucky was he was born there, and subsequently moved to Mississippi. And Kentucky of course did not secede from the union.”

He questioned “the appropriateness of continuing to have a Davis statue in a very prominent place in our state Capitol. Maybe a better place for that,” he said, “would be the Kentucky History Museum.”

Earlier Tuesday, Kentucky Republican gubernatorial nominee Matt Bevin, who unsuccessfully challenged McConnell for the Senate in 2014, said in a statement that it would be “appropriate” to take down the Davis statue from the state Capitol.

There is a statue of Davis in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, one of two representing Mississippi. Each state is permitted to have two statues.