17 Facts About Marlow Cook

Marlow Webster Cook was an American politician from Kentucky who served as a member of the United States Senate from his appointment in December 1968 to his resignation in December 1974.

Marlow Cook ran the lobbying firm Cook and Henderson with former Democratic United States House of Representatives member David N Henderson from North Carolina, and the two were the primary political lobbyists for the Tobacco Institute in the early 1980s.

Marlow Cook was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1957 and again in 1959.

Marlow Cook served on a special committee analyzing education in the state and on a planning committee.

Marlow Cook was elected to two terms as Jefferson County Judge, the equivalent of a mayoral or county executive position administering populous Jefferson County, which, by the 1960s, was mostly suburbs of Louisville.

Marlow Cook was elected in 1961 and, along with fellow Republican William Cowger, who became the new mayor of Louisville, Cook unseated the Democratic Party, which had held both offices for 28 years.

In 1962, Marlow Cook was primarily responsible for the county's $34,000 purchase of the decrepit steamboat Avalon at government auction in Cincinnati.

In 1967, Marlow Cook ran at the top of a slate of statewide office holders as a candidate for governor of Kentucky in the Republican primary election.

Marlow Cook was narrowly defeated by more conservative Barren County Judge Louie Nunn, who went on to be elected the first Republican governor in Kentucky since 1943.

In 1968, Marlow Cook ran for the US Senate to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of another moderate Republican, Thruston Ballard Morton, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Marlow Cook was the first Roman Catholic to hold statewide office in Kentucky.

Marlow Cook was one of the first Republican senators to call for Nixon to resign during the Watergate scandal.

Marlow Cook was defeated in his 1974 bid for re-election by Governor Wendell Ford, a popular Democrat.

Marlow Cook's repeated plea that Ford debate him was seen as highly unusual.

Mitch McConnell, later the Senate Minority Leader, was Marlow Cook's chief legislative aide from 1968 to 1970, and John Yarmuth, then-chair of the United States House Committee on the Budget, was an aide to Marlow Cook in the 1970s, later becoming a Democrat before running for office.

In later years, Marlow Cook was uncertain about what he considered McConnell's turn to the right.

Marlow Cook died on February 4,2016, in Sarasota, Florida from complications from a heart attack, at age 89.