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Mitch McConnell Edit Profile

also known as Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., Moscow Mitch

lawyer politician senator statesman

Mitch McConnell is a Republican Party member of the United States Senate from Kentucky. He assumed office in 1985. His latest term ends on January 3, 2021.

Background

Ethnicity: Mitch McConnell is of Scots-Irish and English descent.

Mitch McConnell was born Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. on January 20, 1942, in Sheffield, Alabama, United States to the family of Addison Mitchell McConnell Sr. and Julia Odene "Dean" Shockley. He spent his childhood nearby Athens, Alabama. His ancestor James McConnell, from County Down, Ireland, who came to this country as a young boy in the 1760s, went on to fight for the colonies in the American Revolution. McConnell contracted polio at age 2 and was not allowed to walk for two years while completing physical therapy.

Education

In 1956, when McConnell's family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, he attended duPont Manual High School. McConnell was elected student council president at his high school during his junior year.

McConnell graduated with honors from the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as student body president. He also is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association.

Career

McConnell worked as an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator John Sherman Cooper before serving as a chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General to President Gerald Ford.

Before his election to the Senate, McConnell served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until he commenced his Senate term on January 3, 1985.

First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell is Kentucky’s longest-serving senator. He made history that year as the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democrat and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. On November 4, 2014, he was elected to a record sixth term by receiving broad support across Kentucky, winning 110 of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties.

Mitch McConnell is now the Senate Majority Leader. Elected to that position unanimously by his Republican colleagues first in 2014 and again in 2016 and 2018, he is only the second Kentuckian to ever serve as Majority Leader in the United States Senate. The first, Senator Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.

Senator McConnell has served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader since the 110th Congress. He is the longest-serving Senate Republican Leader in the history of the United States. McConnell previously served in leadership as the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses and as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles.

McConnell currently serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees.

Achievements

  • Mitch McConnell has received praise from numerous media outlets for his work as Senate Majority Leader. In 2015 and 2019, TIME Magazine named McConnell one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Religion

Mitch McConnell is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Politics

McConnell has been very involved in Republican party politics. He was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. In both, Republicans maintained control of the Senate. McConnell is viewed as a conservative on nearly all issues, receiving an 89% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. However, he was one of just three Senate Republicans who voted against a Constitutional ban on flag desecration.

In September 2019 the United States House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump following allegations that he had extorted a foreign country to investigate one of his political rivals. Three months later the House convicted the president on two charges: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. While McConnell stated that he would hold a trial, he attracted controversy when he announced that he was coordinating with the White House about the proceedings. The trial opened in January 2020, and McConnell was credited with keeping the Republicans unified, especially in defeating a motion to call witnesses. In February 2020 the Senate easily acquitted the president.

Views

As chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee in 1995, Mitch McConnell garnered national attention for resisting Democratic attempts to investigate sexual assault accusations against Republican Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon. In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell threatened to launch investigations into Democratic politicians who had faced similar charges in the past, among them Sen. Ted Kennedy. His Democratic colleagues prevailed, however, and McConnell publicly changed his mind about Packwood, who resigned later that year under the weight of evidence against him.

McConnell earned a reputation as a tough opponent of campaign finance reform and campaign spending limits. From the 1990s he consistently voted against a series of such measures, including some sponsored by fellow Republicans. When a popular bipartisan measure sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Russell D. Feingold was signed into law by President Bush in 2002, McConnell promptly sued the Federal Election Commission, calling the law a violation of free speech. In a December 2003 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law.

In subsequent years McConnell showed greater willingness to compromise. In 2005 he served on a bipartisan Senate committee that made recommendations for broad changes to the Department of Homeland Security, the government agency charged with protecting the country against terrorist attacks in the wake of the September 11 attacks of 2001. The following year he introduced a compromise bill that brought the Republican and Democratic parties closer to an agreement about which interrogation techniques could be used by U.S. authorities on detainees held as suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.

In 2007, however, as the newly elected Senate minority leader, McConnell opposed Democratic calls to set in place a timetable for the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq (see Iraq War), arguing that it was not within the power of Congress to make such a judgment. Following the 2008 election of Pres. Barack Obama, McConnell coordinated the Republicans’ efforts in the Senate, opposing (unsuccessfully) Democratic legislation to reform health care and the financial sector.

The Republicans made significant gains in the 2010 midterm elections, and much of their initial focus turned to the federal deficit. In May 2011 McConnell joined other Republicans in announcing that he would not vote to raise the national debt ceiling unless various programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, underwent spending cuts. Without an increase to the debt limit, the government faced defaulting on its public debt. McConnell became a key figure in drafting a bipartisan deal that included significant cuts but no changes to the various entitlement programs. In addition, tax increases, which McConnell and the Republicans opposed, were also absent. Over the next several years, McConnell helped block a number of Democrat-led initiatives, including gun-control measures and increases to the minimum wage. Although some criticized his party’s use of the filibuster, he argued that Democrats refused to negotiate. After the Republicans regained control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, McConnell was named majority leader.

In 2016 McConnell caused controversy when he refused to bring Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, to a vote in the Senate. McConnell claimed that because it was an election year, the vacancy should remain open until a new president was inaugurated. During the 2016 presidential race, he supported the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who was eventually elected. One of Trump’s first acts as president was to nominate Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In April 2017 McConnell oversaw a change to the Senate rules that did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, and Gorsuch was confirmed by a vote of 54-45. Under McConnell, the Senate approved numerous other Trump judicial nominees. The majority leader also backed various policies supported by the president, perhaps most notably a massive tax-reform bill that was passed in 2017.

Personality

McConnell's opponents have given him a number of nicknames, including "Moscow Mitch," "Cocaine Mitch," the "Grim Reaper," "Darth Vader," "Rich Mitch," "Nuclear Mitch," and "Midnight Mitch." He is known to accept a number of them; however, he objected strenuously to the nickname "Moscow Mitch."

Physical Characteristics: McConnell was struck with polio at the age of 2 in 1944, a decade before a vaccine was developed. He'd written in his memoir, "The Long Game," that he received treatment at the polio treatment center that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had founded in Warm Springs, Georgia. His upper left leg was paralyzed by a polio attack.

As his graduation neared, making him eligible for the draft, McConnell secured a coveted post in the United States Army Reserve, which President Lyndon Johnson kept out of combat for most of his administration. McConnell enlisted on March 21, 1967, and then returned to the University of Kentucky to finish law school. Private McConnell spent little time in uniform. He won a discharge from the Reserve after five weeks of active duty. He trained at Fort Knox from July 9 to August 15, 1967. McConnell's discharge came five days after the United States Senator John Sherman Cooper, Republican Party member of Senate from Kentucky, for whom he had worked as an intern, sent a letter to the two-star general in command of Fort Knox. Cooper told Major General A.D. Surles that McConnell expected to be released on a medical discharge because of optic neuritis, a painful eye condition that is treated by steroids.

Interests

  • fly-fishing, cooking

Connections

McConnell was married in 1968-1980 to Sherrill Redmon, with whom he had three daughters: Eleanor Hayes, Claire Redmon, and Marion Porter. In 1993 he married Elaine Chao, who later served as secretary of labor under President George W. Bush and secretary of transportation under President Donald Trump.

Father:
Addison Mitchell McConnell Sr.
Addison Mitchell McConnell Sr. - Father of Mitch McConnell

Mother:
Julia Odene Shockley
Julia Odene Shockley - Mother of Mitch McConnell

ex-wife:
Sherrill Redmon
Sherrill Redmon - ex-wife of Mitch McConnell

Daughter:
Eleanor Hayes McConnell
Eleanor Hayes McConnell - Daughter of Mitch McConnell

Daughter:
Claire Redmon McConnell
Claire Redmon McConnell - Daughter of Mitch McConnell

Daughter:
Marion Porter McConnell

Wife:
Elaine L. Chao
Elaine L. Chao - Wife of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
George Bush

Acquaintance:
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
George Bush
George Bush - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
Barack Obama
Barack Obama - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
Donald Trump
Donald Trump - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

Acquaintance:
Joe Biden
Joe Biden - Acquaintance of Mitch McConnell

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Education

Career

Official Titles

  • Doctor