It was utterly depressing to watch what Harry Reid had done to the Senate. The day he’d invoked the nuclear option, Elaine called and asked if I wanted to meet for a late dinner at La Loma. She knew how upset I would be, and when I arrived at the restaurant, she was there waiting for me at a table in the back, my margarita ready.
“How are you feeling?” she asked after I sat down.
“This place is a mess,” I said.
Elaine reached across the table to take my hand. “Well, look at it this way,” she said, with a hint of a smile. “There’s nothing tougher than following somebody who did a great job, and nothing that makes it possible for success better than following somebody who made a mess of things.”
“Where have I heard that before?” I said.
“I know it’s going to happen. Next November, you’re going to win this thing, Mitch. You’re going to be majority leader. Then you can turn things around.”
I hoped she was right. If I became the majority leader, my first priority would be to restore the Senate to the place the Founders, in their wisdom, had intended—not the hollow shell of an institution Harry Reid had created. I had had enough of his heavy-handed leadership, and in January, soon after we reconvened, I decided to go to the Senate floor and articulate an alternative. Though it was risky to do so, I wanted everyone to know what a Republican majority would mean for the country. I would restore the committee process. The people we represent would be allowed to have a say through an open amendment process. And senators would once again put in a decent week’s work on the floor. That’s how you reach consensus—by working, and talking, and cooperating, through give-and-take. That way, everyone’s patience is worn down, not just the majority leader’s, and everyone can agree on a result, even if they don’t vote for it in the end. It’s been said that the rules governing the Senate are founded deep in human experience. Using the clock to force consensus is the greatest proof of that. And if Republicans had the majority the next year, we would.
But first I had to win my race.
In March, we were about two and a half months from the primary, and in Kentucky and around the country, things were looking good. I was asked by Carl Hulse of the New York Times how I expected Republicans would fare in the many primary challenges we faced. “I think we’re going to crush them everywhere,” I said. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
When I saw Brian and Stew back in Washington that week, they tried their best to be good-mannered about their feelings about what I’d said. “I have to admit it,” Brian said. “I’m not totally in love with that comment.”
Regardless of how my staff felt about it, I believed what I’d said. I had no animosity toward the Tea Party, because we all wanted to achieve the same things. My problem was with the groups who hijacked their agenda for their own profit.
And I did it.
On May 20, 2014, I beat Matt Bevin 60–35 percent. Mine was the biggest margin of victory of any so-called establishment candidate with a primary challenge, and we came close to winning every county in Kentucky, losing just two of 120. (Demonstrating real resilience, Bevin bounced back the following year and was elected governor of Kentucky.) The good news didn’t stop there. After following the advice I’d offered to my colleagues facing primary challenges—to better engage in these fights—we didn’t lose a single primary to a candidate who couldn’t win in November. It was, after all I’d been through, pretty damn gratifying.
Elaine and I had watched the returns at our campaign headquarters in Louisville with some members of my staff. At the end of the night, Stef walked out with Elaine and me.
“Good night,” Stef said before heading to her car. “And congratulations. I hope you can get some rest.”
“Not yet,” I said. “It’s now time for the real race to begin.”
When I first ran for the Senate in 1984, I knew how little I knew, especially with regard to important federal issues. My unfamiliarity with these matters was a point of great anxiety at the time. My opponent, Dee Huddleston, had served twelve years in the Senate and I feared the idea of having to debate him. I knew Alison Lundergan Grimes, my thirty-four-year-old opponent with no national experience, was, if she had any self-awareness, likely feeling the same way in her race against me. So I did something that few incumbents ever risk doing—I challenged Grimes to a series of Lincoln-Douglas–style debates. She of course declined, thus setting the stage for us to prove how utterly unprepared she was for prime time.
In addition to her inexperience, I had a few other things going for me. A vote for her truly was a vote for Barack Obama, and the members of my campaign staff had a running contest to see who could get the word “Obama” mentioned more often in news articles about the race. But one of her greatest weaknesses was the point of her campaign: She was running mostly on the fact that she wasn’t me. But voters are smarter than that and require more from the people they are being asked to elect. I knew in the end, our race came down to the question of what type of difference I had been making, and would continue to make, for the people of my state. As a freshman senator, Grimes would be attending committee hearings, trying to figure out what was going on, whereas I would be appointing committee members themselves. I’m not one to say it very often, but I’m proud of many of the things I’ve accomplished as a senator, and not only with the deals I’d brokered during the Obama years. I’d worked hard for Kentucky, especially with regard to the impending collapse of the tobacco market in the late 1990s. During my tenure as whip, I crafted the so-called tobacco buyout, which Bush signed into law. It was highly successful in helping to keep tobacco farmers from financial ruin, while also having a positive impact on public health.
One of the things I was most proud of—something I consider to be among the greatest differences I’ve made since holding public office—was my work on Burma. Over the past five decades, this Southeast Asian country had been among the most isolated on earth and its government among the most oppressive. No one embodied the peaceful struggle for democratic reform and peaceful reconciliation more than Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. I first came to know of Suu Kyi more than twenty years earlier, when I came across an article that told the story of her and her nation’s struggle.
Her father, Aung San, was the architect of Burmese independence, and had been assassinated when she was just a toddler. As an adult, Suu Kyi lived in India for a time, worked at the United Nations, and eventually married and settled into a happy and comfortable life with her professor husband and two boys in Oxford, England. In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to take care of her ailing mother, and arrived to find a revolution already under way. She didn’t go to become a leader, but she was her father’s daughter, and she was pushed out front to become the leader of the National League for Democracy. She stayed in Burma with her mother, and two years later the National League for Democracy won 80 percent of the vote in a largely free and fair election. But the regime ignored the election results and cracked down on its own people. Suu Kyi was arrested. Scores of other political reformers were jailed and tortured, and the regime continued its brutal campaign against ethnic minorities, driving many from their homes into refugee camps. Among the many groups that suffered extreme hardships were the Karen, many of whom now call Kentucky home.
With Suu Kyi under house arrest in Burma, her husband fell ill with cancer back in England. She could go to him, but she knew she’d never be allowed back into Burma. With her husband’s support, Suu Kyi made the difficult decision to stay. Her husband died and she never saw him again. For nearly two decades, she remained under house arrest in her mother’s old home on University Avenue on the shores of Inya Lake.
Since first reading her story, I’d felt compelled, in my own small way, to make her cause my own. In September of 1996, I helped pass a bill that included sanctions against the Burmese regime, and seven years later, along with Democra
tic senator Dianne Feinstein, I worked to get the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 enacted as a way of further pressuring the regime to reform itself. I then led the effort with Feinstein to renew the measure every year. In 2007, with Senator Joe Biden, we introduced a measure that enacted enhanced sanctions against the Burmese regime, and three years later, good news finally arrived. The government held an election that was widely thought to be just like the others—unfree and unfair. But, to the surprise of all observers, the new civilian government, which was widely expected to be a continuation of the previous military junta, initiated a number of reforms. Days later, Suu Kyi was released from fifteen years of house arrest, and scores of other political prisoners were freed as well.
Since the recent reforms in Burma, which loosened restrictions, Suu Kyi and I were able to speak by phone a few times and I had been hoping to meet her in person as soon as I heard the news of her release. That opportunity finally arrived in January of 2012, when I traveled to see her in Burma. As I pulled up to her house in Rangoon—the same house in which she’d spent a decade and a half under house arrest, cut off from the world—I felt very emotional. And even more so when she hugged me hello. But during our meeting, she was upbeat and optimistic, telling me that Burma had made more progress in the past six months than in the previous five decades. As the lead author of an annual sanctions bill aimed at encouraging its government to reform, this came as welcome and unexpected news.
During our meeting, I asked her to come to Kentucky to speak at the McConnell Center. She agreed, and I hosted her in September of 2012. I’m always grateful for the people who speak at the McConnell Center, and by this time I’d hosted a number of senators of both parties, six secretaries of state, four secretaries of defense, Chief Justice Roberts, Vice President Biden, and President George W. Bush. But welcoming Suu Kyi was especially meaningful. Before making the trip to Kentucky to speak at U of L, and spend the day with Elaine and me, she came first to the Capitol to accept the Congressional Gold Medal—Congress’s highest honor. I had been at the vanguard of wanting to bestow the award on her in April of 2008, knowing she wasn’t—and might never be—free to come and accept it. Burma continues to face a number of challenges, and the job is still not done. But even so, it was a very, very proud day and one that I was quite sure I would never live long enough to see.
In the months before the election, I spent a lot of time crisscrossing the state. I’d been visiting the small towns of Kentucky throughout my career, and returning to them these months felt as if I were catching up with old friends. At every stop, I saw what I’d been seeing over the years—the goodness, decency, and warmth of Kentuckians, and I was reminded of a line from a famous poem about my state: “If these United States can be called a body, Kentucky can be called its heart.” Often, Elaine and I would board the campaign bus after an event to find that someone had left a plate of homemade food—a tray of sandwiches, a fresh casserole, or my favorite, ham and biscuits. During one stop, on our way to Lexington, Terry Carmack’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Anna, arrived with sugar cookies she’d made herself, decorated with frosting letters reading “Beat Grimes” and “Team Mitch.”
In Campbellsville, Kentucky, where I’d helped block the closing of a large apparel factory under a plan to outsource the work to prisoners, I was greeted by a particularly large and enthusiastic crowd. People had come by the dozens to thank me for helping to save their jobs. For another part of the tour, we were accompanied by country music star Lee Greenwood. He opened every rally by singing “God Bless the USA,” his song that had become very popular after 9/11. After joining him onstage to sing the song fourteen times at fourteen different stops over two days, I’d often find myself back on the bus, humming the song, morning and night.
“I really love that song,” Elaine said one evening. “But Mitch, you’re starting to drive me crazy with the humming.”
Terry was with me through it all. He’d been with me in my first race, nearly thirty years earlier, and it was nice to be back on the road with him. One of our last stops of the campaign was a parade in Hazard, a town of less than six thousand people in eastern Kentucky. When we arrived, several journalists were milling about, waiting for me. “Remember how I joked, nearly thirty years ago, that being your advance man meant getting out of the car before you?” Terry said. “It’s sure not like that today. Look at all the media. Who are all these people?”
There were, indeed, a lot of them. At a few earlier stops, I’d learned that among the reporters present were some who’d come from as far away as Japan and Norway. I walked over to a film crew and introduced myself to the reporter. “Where you from?” I asked her.
“Al Jazeera.”
Terry looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Nope,” he said. “Nothing like thirty years ago.”
I have a few cardinal rules that I ask my staff to follow—know I’m going to trust you to do your job, let me know if there’s a problem I should know about, and never tell me something is a sure thing if there’s a chance it won’t happen. This last one is particularly important to me. I don’t want to formulate a strategy based on speculation.
The Sunday before Election Day, with this in mind, Josh and I called Ward Baker, who was then the political director of the NRSC. I wanted to go over where things stood with every race across the country in the final forty-eight hours. Ward talked me through the races, state by state.
“Things are looking good,” Josh said.
“What’s the take-away here?” I asked.
“Sir.” Ward paused. “You are going to be the next majority leader.” I knew Ward wouldn’t say this if there were any chance it wasn’t true. I allowed it to hit me. Nearly thirty years of struggle and hard work was now just forty-eight hours away. There was so much I wanted to say, but all I had was silence.
“You there?” Ward eventually asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I sure am.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Victory
On the morning of November 4, 2014, Elaine and I left home to head to Bellarmine University to cast our votes. On the way, as we rounded a bend in the road near the polling station, Elaine grabbed my arm.
“Look,” she said. Gathered along the side of the road was a crowd of people holding handmade signs reading “Team Mitch.” As we approached, they broke into cheers and applause. I was unspeakably grateful.
Elaine and I got out of our car to a throng of reporters, and as I pushed my way through them toward the building, I was taken by surprise to see a large number of my DC staff, who had, without telling me, used their vacation days to come to Kentucky. They stood with dozens of my former staff, cheering me on. With a growing lump in my throat, I cast my vote. Afterward, Elaine and I stopped and spoke to the crowd. I’m not sure who was more enthusiastic—them or Elaine. I might not necessarily be known as a big hugger, but even I couldn’t help myself. Alongside Elaine, I went from person to person, hugging every one of them, thanking them for their hard work, and for showing up for us, in more ways than one.
We returned home to a quiet house and shared some leftovers we’d picked up the day before at Morris’ Deli. “I need to distract myself,” Elaine said when we’d finished lunch. “I’m going upstairs to work. What are you going to do?”
“The only thing left to do,” I said. “Wait.”
A few hours later, I met Stef at the Louisville Marriott East, where we’d all gather that evening. We’d rented two adjoining rooms upstairs, where I’d watch the results, and a large ballroom downstairs to hold a party for our supporters. As I walked into the ballroom, I looked at the large stage, knowing that in just a few hours, from this very spot, I would deliver either the most gratifying or most depressing speech of my life. Several platforms had been set up in the back of the ballroom for the members of the press who were planning to come.
“That’s far too much room for the press,” I said to Stef. �
��I don’t think we need all that space.”
“No, we do. Listen to who’s coming.” She began to read the list—nearly 150 credentialed members of the press. Fifty-one news organizations.
Just as I had before every one of my elections, at about five o’clock, I called together all the members of my staff. Reverend Bob Russell, the former pastor of Southeast Christian Church, began by offering a prayer. One by one, I thanked everyone for their work. Without the people who stood beside me in that room, and others who had supported me in the long months leading up to this campaign—Josh, who had run a flawless campaign; Kyle, who had advised me to bide my time in 2002, and then to run in 2014; Brian; Stef; Billy; John Ashbrook; Terry—I never would have been there, standing on the precipice. I knew there was a chance my dreams were about to come true. I couldn’t have had a more wonderful, more committed group of people to share it with.
As Kyle and I headed to the room upstairs to watch the returns, Stef caught up with us. Her face was flushed.
“We got the early numbers out of Floyd County.”
“How do they look?”
“They’re weird.”
“What do you mean weird?”
“Look,” she said, handing me her phone. “We’re winning there.” We never won there. In fact, Floyd County had not voted Republican since the Civil War.
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