Mitch McConnell is an American Senator from Kentucky. He is a member of the Republican party and the leader of the Senate Republican Conference. McConnell is in the news in relation to the contents of the 1.7 trillion spending bill presented before the Senate.
Additional funding was listed to aid Defense and Ukraine. He also informed about the decision of the House Jan 6 Committee to put the blame on former President Donald Trump in the Capitol Hill riots investigation.
McConnell also expressed his favor for Kevin McCarthy becoming the speaker of the House.
Mitch McConnell – Early Life & Education
Addison Mitchell McConnell III was born in Sheffield, Alabama, and was raised in Athens. He is 80 years old.
He has English and Scots-Irish descent. His father was army personnel. At the age of two, he had an episode of Polio that affected his leg.
McConnell went to the Omicron Delta Kappa at the University of Louisville and graduated with a B.A. honor in Political Science in 1964.
In college, he had a membership in the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity and was the President of the Council of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Further, in 1967 he graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law. While at the law college he served as the President of the Student Bar Association.
McConnell was an attendee of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the end of which Martin Luther King Jr delivered the historic I Have A Dream speech.
He has served as an intern to Senator John Sherman Cooper.
He is married to Elaine Chao who was the Secretary of Labor under the presidency of George W. Bush and was the Secretary of Transportation under President Donald Trump.
He has three offspring from his first marriage with Sherrill Redmon. He is the father of 3 daughters named Porter, Eleanor, and Claire.
Mitch McConnell – Professional Career And Roles
Mitch McConnell is a former attorney and an American politician.
McConnell has served in the U.S. Army Reserve for a brief period. He was discharged as he was diagnosed with optic neuritis which made him medically unfit for military service.
From 1968 to 1970, McConnell served as the chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook in Washington, D.C.
In 1971 he worked for the candidacy of Tom Emberton as the Governor of Kentucky. His attempt to run for a state legislature seat was deemed unqualified as he didn’t meet the residency requirements.
After that, he worked in Segal, Isenberg, Sales, and Stewart, a law firm in Louisville. He also served as a night faculty for political science at the University of Louisville.
In 1974 he started a position as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General under the then U.S. President Gerald Ford. During this time he worked in close quarters with Laurence Silberman, Antonin Scalia, and Robert Bork.
In 1975 he was the acting United States Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legislative Affairs under President Ford.
McConnell was elected as the Jefferson County Judge/Executive in 1977. He won the election by 53% to 47% against fellow Democrat and the incumbent Todd Hollenbach III. In 1981 he was re-elected winning the election for 51% to 47% against Jefferson County Commissioner Jim Pop Malone.
During the initial years, McConnell had a moderate image and later he shifted towards a conservative Republican approach. McConnell is widely regarded as an obstructionist.
He served as the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the time period between 1997 and 2001. In 1999 he participated in the vote to convict and remove Bill Clinton from Office.
In the 108th Congress, he got elected as the Majority Whip for the first time and was again elected unanimously in 2004. He was in Office until 2007.
McConnell was the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee for the first term, the period between 1999 and 2001, and a second term from Jan 2001 to June 2001.
He was in service as the Majority Leader of the Senate. He assumed Office in 2015 and was in until 2021.
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From Jan 2007 onwards McConnell is serving as the Leader of the Senate Republican Conference. He also has the position of Senate Minority Leader.
As a Republican, he was not on friendly terms with the President Obama government and administration. He reportedly delayed the banking reform and the health care reform which were two of the most significant put forward by the Democrats in Obama’s tenure.
Mitch McConnell is known as an expert on the filibuster tactic. It is a tactical approach used in the U.S. Senate in which a bill is put to death. It is done by putting a bill to death by blocking or delaying the vote on it by posing obstructions that would prevent the debate from ending.
McConnell had criticized former President Donald Trump in the 2016 Donald Trump Access Hollywood Controversy. Trump has publicly criticized McConnell for being ungrateful for hiring the latter’s wife.
McConnell haters and critics have assigned several nicknames to him including Cocaine Mitch, Moscow Mitch, Nuclear Mitch, Darth Vader, Old Crow, and the list goes on.
Mitch McConnell – Net Worth & Other Facts
As per the data available from October 2022, Mitch McConnell is having a net worth estimated to be 150 million USD.
McConnell is the founder of the James Madison Center for Free Speech in Washington D.C. In 2018 he was listed as one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. Senate. He is one of the members of the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.
Mitch McConnell has undergone a triple heart bypass surgery earlier in 2003.
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