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Kentucky farmers needed help from Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., three years ago as Congress debated a buyout of their government tobacco quotas. The farmers ended up with the perfect lobbyist to present their case: Gordon Hunter Bates, McConnell's recently departed chief of staff and campaign manager, just getting his start in the private sector.
Sen. Mitch McConnell is famously close-lipped, but not with Gordon Hunter Bates. Barbara Kucera, a University of Kentucky researcher, occasionally talks to Bates about millions of federal dollars McConnell is steering toward a project she shares with Louisville company eCavern.
When Sen. Mitch McConnell married Elaine Chao in 1993, he got more than a wife — he got a river of campaign donations from her family and friends in the Chinese-American business community.
Millionaire coal magnate Bob Murray knew the name to drop in September 2002, when Mine Safety Health Administration inspectors confronted him about safety problems at his mines: Sen. Mitch McConnell. Murray, a large man with a fierce temper, is a huge donor to Republican senators. McConnell, R-Ky., rose through the ranks by raising money for those senators. And McConnell is married to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, whose agency oversees MSHA.
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COMMENTARY
— all the way back to 1984.
President Ronald Reagan was on his way to re-election. Amadeus won the Oscar for best picture. After leading at halftime, the University of Kentucky Wildcats seemingly bricked every shot they took in the second half of the NCAA semi-finals against eventual national champion Georgetown University.
One of Sen. Mitch McConnell's "best friends and buddies" -- his words -- is Albert Boyajian, a rich Los Angeles bakery magnate who is a leader in the Armenian-American community. What does a Kentucky Republican share with a West Coast ethnic leader? Money.
The pharmaceutical industry needed a friendly senator in 1999, and it was willing to talk money. Senate Democrats were pushing universal prescription drug coverage for senior citizens -- including a provision to let Medicare negotiate for cheaper prices. Drug companies wanted to stop them.
Sen. Mitch McConnell has raised nearly $220 million for himself and other Republicans during 22 years in the Senate. Here is how: McConnell Senate Committee: Fund-raising arm for McConnell's Senate re-election. $21 million.
In the early 1970s, Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., a young and intense Republican lawyer, strode into the political science class he taught at the University of Louisville.
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Herald-Leader staff writer John Cheves, 34, reported and wrote The McConnell Machine. Cheves joined the newspaper in 1997 and has reported on Kentucky courts, politics and government. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Next month, he begins a yearlong congressional fellowship with the American Political Science Association in Washington.
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Marilyn W. Thompson, then editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, faced a problem last year that is afflicting more and more newspaper editors across the country: She wanted to initiate a major reporting project but lacked sufficient resources to finance it.
