On November 15, 2006, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell was unanimously elected Republican Leader in the 110th Congress by his Republican colleagues. McConnell is the 15th Republican leader and the first party leader from Kentucky in over half a century. The last leader from Kentucky, Senator Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.
Leader McConnell previously served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, 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.
McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984. That year, he was the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat a Democrat incumbent, and the first Republican to win a statewide race in Kentucky since 1968. McConnell's landslide victory in 2002 is also one for the record books: On November 5, he won a fourth term with 65 percent of the vote, the largest margin of victory for a Republican in Kentucky history. The previous record was held by the legendary Senator John Sherman Cooper. On June 27, 2005, McConnell became the longest-serving Republican Senator from Kentucky, again breaking a record previously held by Cooper.
Born on February 20, 1942, and raised in south Louisville, McConnell graduated in 1964 with honors from the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as student body president. In 1967, he graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association. McConnell gained experience on Capitol Hill working as an intern for Senator John Sherman Cooper before serving as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook and deputy assistant attorney general under President Gerald R. Ford. Before his election to the U.S. Senate, McConnell served as County Judge-Executive in Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until he was sworn in to the Senate on January 3, 1985.
McConnell currently serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees.
Senator McConnell is married to United States Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao, a former president of the United Way of America and director of the Peace Corps. He is the proud father of three daughters.