Kentucky

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Kentucky

Find out more about your senators below.

Jim Bunning

Jim Bunning

On November 2, 2004, Jim Bunning was elected to serve a second term as U.S. Senator for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Bunning was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998.

As a youngster in Northern Kentucky, Bunning fell in love with baseball and even then he displayed a competitive spirit and a willingness to work hard. That combination carried him on to a highly successful 17-year career as a Major League Baseball player after his graduation from Xavier University with an Economics degree.

Pitching primarily for the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies, Bunning accumulated a record of achievement that eventually won him a seat in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. He was the second pitcher in history (Cy Young was the first) to record 1,000 strikeouts and 100 wins in both the American and National leagues. When he retired in 1971, Bunning was second on the all time strikeout list - second only to Walter Johnson.

In 1977, Bunning ran for and won a City Council seat in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. In 1979, he was elected to the Kentucky State Senate and became its Republican Leader. In 1986, Bunning was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 4th District of Kentucky where he served for 12 years.

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Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell

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 is only the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the U.S. Senate. The other 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.

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.

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