Mitch McConnell
Mitch McConnell
20.02.1942 (82 years) (Sheffield, Alabama, U.S.)
Addison Mitchell McConnell III (born February 20, 1942) is an American politician and retired attorney serving his seventh term as the senior United States senator from Kentucky, which he has held since 1985. McConnell is the Senate leader of the Republican Party, having served as minority leader since 2021 and previously from 2007 to 2015, and as majority leader from 2015 to 2021. McConnell first served as a Deputy United States Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford from 1974 until 1975 and went on to serve as Jefferson County Judge/Executive from 1977 until 1984 in his home state of Kentucky. McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and is the second Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate. During the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He was elected Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and re-elected to the post in 2004. In November 2006 he was elected Senate minority leader – the post he held until Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. McConnell holds conservative political positions, although he was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010. 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. During the Trump administration, the Senate Republican majority under his leadership passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, and confirmed a record number of federal appeals court judges during a president's first two years. 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. While supportive of many of Trump's domestic and foreign policies, McConnell was critical of Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and despite voting to acquit on Trump's second impeachment trial on reasons related to the constitutionality of impeaching a former president, deemed him "practically and morally responsible" for the January 6 United States Capitol attack.McConnell is married to former secretary of transportation and former secretary of labor Elaine Chao. In 2015 and 2019, Time listed McConnell as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.