Mitch McConnell Jr.

Ancestors

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Preceded by Walter Dee Huddleston

Mitch McConnell US Senator (Class 2) from Kentucky 1985—Incumbent

Succeeded by

Biography

Early Life

Mitch McConnell was born in Sheffield, Alabama in Northwest Alabama and initially lived in Athens, west of Huntsville, where his grandfather Robert Hayes McConnell managed the McConnell Service Funeral Home.

At age two, McConnell was partially paralyzed with polio, which was successfully treated in Warm Springs, Georgia, though his treatment nearly bankrupted his family.

In 1950, eight-year-old Mitch's family moved to Augusta, Georgia, as his father was stationed at nearby Fort Gordon. Six years later, the McConnell family relocated with 14-year-old Mitch to Louisville, Kentucky. McConnell's political fortunes began with a term as student council president his junior year at duPont Manual High School.

Education

McConnell earned a bachelors with honors in political science at the University of Louisville in 1964. While a student he had attended MLK's 1963 "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" in Washington DC. Afterward McConnell graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law where he was president of the student bar association.

Career

McConnell avoided service in the Vietnam War through student draft deferments, then enlisted in the US Army Reserve in 1967 before being discharged as unfit due to a previously-undiagnosed eye condition.

Afterward McConnell worked in Washington and Kentucky in a variety of political and legislative positions, from a legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook to Judge/Executive of Jefferson County, before being elected to the US Senate in 1984, defeating two-term incumbent Walter Darlington Huddleston.

McConnell has been reelected six times. He has led the Senate Republican Conference since 2007, and in that capacity was Senate Majority Leader from 2015 to 2021 and Senate Minority Leader from 2007 to 2015 and again since 2021.

He has been the longest-serving Senate Republican leader since June 2018 and is the longest-serving Kentucky senator in history.

Family

McConnell was married to his first wife from 1968 to 1980, with whom he shares three daughters. He married his second wife, Elaine Chao, in 1993.

Sources

• Mitch McConnell on Wikipedia
• Wikidata: Item Q355522, en:Wikipedia
• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Henry County Local, Eminence, Kentucky, 24 Feb 1993, p.5A. "Chao-McConnell" https://www.newspapers.com/image/920763388/