PERSON: Mitch McConnell

Majority Leader

Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. Elected to that position unanimously by his Republican colleagues in 2014, he is only the second Kentuckian to ever serve as Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate. The first, Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.<br> <br> Senator McConnell previously served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader in the 110th, 111th, 112th and 113th Congresses and as the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses. McConnell also served in leadership as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles.<br> <br> 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 a Democrat incumbent and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. On November 4, 2014, he was elected to another six-year term by receiving broad support across Kentucky, winning 110 of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties.<br> <br> Senator 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.<br> <br> McConnell worked as an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator John Sherman Cooper before serving as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook and as deputy assistant attorney general to President Gerald Ford.<br> <br> Before his election to the U.S. Senate, he served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until he commenced his Senate term on January 3, 1985.<br> <br> McConnell currently serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees. He is the proud father of three daughters.<br> <br> Senator McConnell is married to Elaine L. Chao, who served for eight years as President George W. Bush’s U.S. Secretary of Labor. Secretary Chao is a former president of the United Way of America and director of the Peace Corps.<br> <br> — mcconnell.senate.gov