Sen. Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell is the senior senator from Kentucky and the Senate Republican Leader. First elected to that position unanimously by his colleagues in 2006, he is the 15th Senate Republican Leader and only the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the Senate. The first, Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.<br /> <br /> Senator McConnell previously served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader in the 110th, 111th and 112th Congresses and 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.<br /> <br /> First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell made history that year as the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat a Democrat incumbent and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. McConnell’s victory in 2008 is also one for the record books: On November 4, he won nearly a million votes, the most ever received by a Kentuckian in a statewide race.