85 Facts About Mitch McConnell

Addison Mitchell McConnell III was born on February 20,1942 and is an American politician and retired attorney serving as the senior United States senator from Kentucky, a seat he has held since 1985.

Mitch McConnell was first elected to the US Senate in 1984 and is the second Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate.

Mitch McConnell was elected Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and re-elected to the post in 2004.

Mitch McConnell holds conservative political positions, although he was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career.

Mitch McConnell led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the US Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v FEC that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2010.

Mitch McConnell worked to withhold Republican support for major presidential initiatives during the Obama administration, having made frequent use of the filibuster, and blocked many of President Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Mitch McConnell invoked the "nuclear option" to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, after his predecessor Harry Reid had previously eliminated the filibuster for all other presidential nominations; Trump subsequently won confirmation battles on Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.

Mitch McConnell is married to former secretary of transportation and former secretary of labor Elaine Chao.

Mitch McConnell was born in Sheffield, Alabama, and grew up in nearby Athens, Alabama, where his grandfather, Robert Hayes Mitch McConnell Sr.

In 1944, at the age of two, Mitch McConnell's upper left leg was paralyzed by a polio attack.

Mitch McConnell received treatment at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.

Mitch McConnell said his family "almost went broke" because of costs related to his illness.

In 1950, when he was eight, Mitch McConnell moved with his family from Athens to Augusta, Georgia, where his father, who was in the Army, was stationed at Fort Gordon.

Mitch McConnell was elected student council president at his high school during his junior year.

Mitch McConnell was president of the Student Council of the College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.

Mitch McConnell attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr.

Mitch McConnell has said his time with Cooper inspired him to run for the Senate later in life.

In 1967, Mitch McConnell graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was president of the Student Bar Association.

In March 1967, shortly before the expiration of his educational draft deferment upon graduation from law school, Mitch McConnell enlisted in the US Army Reserve as a private at Louisville, Kentucky.

From 1968 to 1970, Mitch McConnell worked as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook in Washington, DC, managing a legislative department consisting of five members as well as assisting with speech writing and constituent services.

In 1971, Mitch McConnell returned to Louisville, where he worked for Tom Emberton's candidacy for Governor of Kentucky, which was unsuccessful.

Mitch McConnell attempted to run for a seat in the state legislature but was disqualified because he did not meet the residency requirements for the office.

Mitch McConnell then went to work for a Louisville law firm, Segal, Isenberg, Sales and Stewart, for a few years.

In October 1974, Mitch McConnell returned to Washington to fill a position as Deputy Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford, where he worked alongside Robert Bork, Laurence Silberman, and Antonin Scalia.

Mitch McConnell served as acting United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs under President Ford in 1975.

From 1997 to 2001, Mitch McConnell was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the body charged with securing electoral victories for Republicans.

Mitch McConnell was first elected as Majority Whip in the 108th Congress.

Mitch McConnell has a reputation as a skilled political strategist and tactician.

Mitch McConnell regularly obtained earmarks for businesses and institutions in Kentucky, until the practice was banned by Congress in 2010.

Mitch McConnell has received criticism for funding "temporary patches" to Kentucky's long-term healthcare problems, while simultaneously opposing and obstructing national programs that seek to improve healthcare more systematically, such as Obamacare and Medicaid expansion.

Mitch McConnell worked to delay and obstruct health care reform and banking reform, two of the most notable pieces of legislation that Democrats navigated through Congress early in Obama's tenure.

In 2012, Mitch McConnell proposed a measure allowing President Obama to raise the debt ceiling, hoping some Democratic senators would oppose the measure, thus demonstrating disunity among Democrats.

Mitch McConnell initially endorsed fellow Kentucky senator Rand Paul during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Paul withdrew from the race following the Iowa caucus, and Mitch McConnell endorsed presumptive nominee Donald Trump on May 4,2016.

In October 2017, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and other Trump allies blamed Mitch McConnell for stalling the Trump administration's legislation.

On December 14,2019, Mitch McConnell met with White House counsel Pat Cipollone and White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland.

Later that day, Mitch McConnell declared that for Trump's impeachment trial, he would be in "total coordination with the White House counsel's office" and Trump's representatives.

Mitch McConnell declared that there was "no chance" the Senate would convict Trump and remove him from office.

On December 17,2019, Mitch McConnell rejected a request to call four witnesses for Trump's impeachment trial because, according to Mitch McConnell, the Senate's role was to "act as judge and jury", not to investigate.

On January 12,2021, it was reported that Mitch McConnell supported impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, believing it would make it easier for Republicans to purge the party of Trump and rebuild the party.

Mitch McConnell called for delaying the Senate trial until after Joe Biden's inauguration.

Once the Senate trial started, Mitch McConnell voted to acquit Trump on February 13,2021, and said it was unconstitutional to convict someone who was no longer in office.

In 2021, Mitch McConnell sought to organize Republican Senators into filibustering a bipartisan commission to investigate the storming of the Capitol on January 6.

On May 28,2021, Mitch McConnell voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

In May 2010, after President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to succeed the retiring John Paul Stevens, Mitch McConnell said during a Senate speech that Americans wanted to make sure Kagan would be independent of influence from White House as an associate justice and noted Obama's referring to Kagan as a friend of his in announcing her nomination.

Mitch McConnell announced his opposition to Kagan's confirmation, saying she was not forthcoming enough about her "views on basic principles of American constitutional law".

Later in a 2019 interview, Mitch McConnell credited himself for the large number of judicial vacancies created in the last two years of Obama's presidency.

Shortly thereafter, Mitch McConnell issued a statement indicating that the US Senate would not consider any Supreme Court nominee put forth by Obama.

Gorsuch's nomination was confirmed on April 7,2017, after Mitch McConnell eliminated the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees.

Mitch McConnell said he considers the judiciary to be the item of Trump's first two years with the longest-lasting impact on the country.

Mitch McConnell confirmed 260 federal judges over the course of Trump's four-year term, shifting the federal judiciary to the right.

Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of creating an "extreme" distortion of Kavanaugh's record during his hearing process.

Mitch McConnell afterward admitted the confirmation process was a low point for the Senate, but downplayed reports of dysfunction in the Senate; he said claims that the Senate was "somehow broken over this [were] simply inaccurate".

In October 2018, Mitch McConnell said if a Supreme Court vacancy were to occur during Trump's 2020 re-election year he would not follow his 2016 decision to let the winner of the upcoming presidential election nominate a justice.

On October 23,2020, Mitch McConnell set in place the Senate debate for the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ginsburg's seat.

Mitch McConnell later vowed Republicans would not force the US to default on its debt or shut down the government in 2014, when stop-gap funding measures were set to expire.

Mitch McConnell said he would not allow other Republicans to obstruct the budget-making process.

Mitch McConnell called for Democrats to support a Trump administration-backed measure that included $5.7billion in wall funding, together with a temporary extension of protections for DACA recipients, a Democratic priority.

Privately, other Republican senators pressured Mitch McConnell to stop blocking appropriations legislation.

Mitch McConnell subsequently reversed his position when Trump endorsed the proposed package.

Mitch McConnell directed Senate Republicans in negotiations for two other COVID-19 response packages: the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020, and the CARES Act.

Mitch McConnell's comments were met with sharp criticism from various state and local officials.

In negotiations between congressional Democrats and White House officials for an additional aid package, Mitch McConnell was absent from the talks.

Mitch McConnell called the bill a choice between "do[ing] something" and "do[ing] nothing", and said he was holding the procedural vote to get lawmakers on the record about their willingness to compromise on COVID-19 legislation.

Furthermore, as a result of his unpopularity with Trump and the more populist base, Mitch McConnell has had historically low approval for a senator when looking at the electorate as a whole, as a 2012 poll and a 2016 poll each found that Mitch McConnell had the lowest home-state approval rating of any sitting senator.

Mitch McConnell has taken conservative stances for the past several decades.

Mitch McConnell led opposition against Obamacare, first through efforts to delay or prevent the law's passage, and later to repeal or replace it, including via the American Healthcare Reform Act.

Mitch McConnell has opposed stronger regulations, gun control measures and efforts to mitigate climate change.

Mitch McConnell has criticized proposed legislation by House Democrats such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and was criticized by Nancy Pelosi for withholding votes on measures passed by the Democratic-controlled House during his time as Senate Majority Leader, including the For the People Act of 2019, the Equality Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Mitch McConnell has supported stronger border security, free trade agreements and reductions in taxes.

Mitch McConnell voted for the Iraq Resolution, which authorized military action against Iraq, and supported the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 in public.

In 1984, Mitch McConnell ran for the US Senate against two-term Democratic incumbent Walter Dee Huddleston.

Mitch McConnell was the only Republican Senate challenger to win that year, despite Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in the presidential election.

Mitch McConnell's campaign was noted for a series of television campaign spots called "Where's Dee", which featured a group of bloodhounds trying to find Huddleston, implying that Huddleston's attendance record in the Senate was poor.

Mitch McConnell's campaign ran television ads warning voters to not "Get BeSheared" and included images of sheep being sheared.

In 2014, Mitch McConnell faced Louisville businessman Matt Bevin in the Republican primary.

Mitch McConnell was married to his first wife, Sherrill Redmon, from 1968 to 1980 and had three daughters, Porter, Eleanor, and Claire.

Porter Mitch McConnell is the campaign director for Take on Wall Street, a left-wing advocacy coalition.

In February 2003, Mitch McConnell underwent a triple heart bypass surgery in relation to blocked arteries at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Mitch McConnell was inducted as a member of the Sons of the American Revolution on March 1,2013.

Mitch McConnell is on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.

In March 2023, Mitch McConnell was hospitalized after a fall, and was treated for a concussion.

Mitch McConnell has been portrayed by Beck Bennett in various sketches on Saturday Night Live.

In 2017, Mitch McConnell was portrayed satirically on an episode of South Park.

In 2021, Mitch McConnell was named one of the US' top 'climate villains' by The Guardian.