Mitch McConnell
Addison Mitchell " Mitch " McConnell, Jr. ( born February 20, 1942 in Tuscumbia, Colbert County, Alabama) is an American Republican Party politician. He represents from 3 January 1985, the state of Kentucky in the U.S. Senate, where it is called " Minority Leader " leader of the opposition Republicans.
Family background and employment
Raised in Louisville Mitch McConnell acquired in 1964 from the University of Louisville Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. In 1967, he received his law degree from the Law School of the University of Kentucky; In the same year he was admitted to the bar in the state.
His extensive experience in the Senate, he collected in 1967 as a personal assistant of the two Senators John Sherman Cooper and Marlow Cook. Under President Gerald Ford, he was from 1974 to 1975 as Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General. Up for election to the Senate, he served as a district judge in Jefferson County his home state.
He is currently with Elaine Chao, the former Secretary of Labor in the Bush administration, married. The couple has five daughters. McConnell has three daughters from his first marriage.
U.S. Senator
In the elections to the U.S. Senate in November 1984, he was the sole Republican to defeat an incumbent of the Democratic Party: In a close decision, he sat down in a become a classic aggressive humorous campaign with just a few thousand votes ahead of Walter Huddleston by after Huddleston had reached an agreement value of 68 percent at the beginning of the campaign. Thrice McConnell was re-elected ever since; at the 2002 election, he reached with 65 percent of the vote, the largest majority that won per a Republican representative in Kentucky. He surpassed the previous record of his master, Senator Cooper. His Democratic rival, Lois Combs Weinberg, the daughter of former Governor Bert Combs, had gone despite a solid campaign strategy with the disadvantage in the struggle to have won the internal party preselection only slightly with just 1,000 votes ahead. McConnell succeeded even to bring trade unionists to his side, using his powerful position to direct resources to Kentucky. Against his challenger Bruce Lunsford he had in 2008 - coincided with the election of Barack Obama as president - a significantly tighter re-election with about 53 to 47 percent of the vote.
McConnell led from 1995 to 1997 the chair of the ethics committee. After that he was from January 1999 to June 2001 in two non- consecutive terms Chairman of the Rules Committee. He also stood from 1997 to 2001 the National Republican Senatorial Committee before. From 2003 to 2007 he served as the Republican Whip majority faction; after the defeat of his party in the Senate election in 2006 he released on 4 January 2007, resigned from the Congress Bill Frist from a faction leader.
In the upcoming election to the U.S. Senate in November 2014, the persistently unpopular McConnell is facing one of his toughest election campaigns. It occurs as an incumbent for decades and powerful central figure of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate in an atmosphere, which can be detrimental to these conditions: In particular, since the advent of the Tea Party movement of 2010, long-serving incumbent of the lifted as inefficient, corrupt and applicable Washington in a difficult position so also McConnell obtained in the wealthy businessman Matt Bevin in the internal party preselection a Tea Party challenger, the McConnell forcing to woo the Republican base rather than looking to swing voters in the political center. And Alison Lundergan Grimes is it an unexpectedly strong competition grown on the Democratic side, opposite the he already confirmed its reputation of being one of the toughest campaigners in the United States. The first surveys to see a head-to -head race between him and Lundergan Grimes, which is why the Cook Political Report has ranked the decision in August 2013 as " Toss Up" ( completely open ), even if he for many observers, the clear favorite for the reelection remains.