Updated: November 13, 2014, 1:12 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky won election by fellow Republicans on Thursday to become Senate majority leader when the new Congress convenes in January, fulfilling a long-held ambition.
A Senate Republican official said McConnell, 72 was chosen by acclamation at a closed-door meeting of the rank and file.
As majority leader, McConnell will set the Senate’s agenda. Along with House Speaker John Boehner, he will decide what legislation is sent to the White House in the final two years of President Barack Obama’s term.
McConnell was elected to a sixth Senate term last week in elections in which Republicans gained a majority for the first time in eight years.
He will formally assume his duties as majority leader in January. Democrats have assailed him in recent campaigns as a guardian of gridlock for his opposition to nearly all of President Barack Obama’s initiatives. At the same time, his office in the Capitol is decorated with two paintings and a bust of Henry Clay, a 19th century Kentuckian known as the Great Compromiser who favored government development of roads and bridges in a young America.
Senate Republicans had only one contested leadership race, and selected Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi to chair the party’s campaign committee for the 2016 elections. He defeated Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada.
Neither Republican leader faced public opposition on the eve of Thursday’s party elections in closed door meetings. If the sessions were celebratory occasions for Republicans, they were less than that for Democrats, who took a pounding in the Nov. 4 midterm elections.
After eight years in the minority, Senate Republicans picked up at least eight seats from Democrats and are still hoping for a ninth in a Louisiana runoff set for Dec. 6.
The party also padded its majority in the House, where a handful of races remain unresolved. Republicans are on track to equal or eclipse the 246 they won in 1946, a figure that stands as a post-World War II high.
Despite sizable election losses, Democrats appeared ready to hand their own leaders another two years at the helm, postponing a generational change that appears not far in the future.
Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, a few weeks shy of his 75th birthday, was in line to become the minority leader in the new Congress. He was first elected Democratic leader in 2004.
Officials said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of liberals, would be given a seat at the leadership table. At the same time. Sen. John Tester, a second-term moderate from Montana, was in line to become head of the party’s campaign organization for 2016.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, 74, is expected to be elected to a new term as House Democratic leader when the rank-and-file meets next week. She first won her post a dozen years ago. She was speaker for four years when Democrats held the majority, and has served as minority leader for eight.
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SenateSonsOfMitches
keeping their lack of Integrity in tact.
Can turtles have heart attacks or strokes?
Mitch McConnell’s election is huge win for the corporate kleptocrat Romney Republicans and is a huge setback for Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and the conservative wing of the Republican party.
You betcha, especially when they’re exposed to as much hear as this sum uva mitch is gonna be feelin. We’ll just have to hope to the dear Lord this old leatherbacks brains don’t explode with all the furor going on inside it, why it could render him completely paralyzed, speechless, and yet helplessly aware of the fucking mess his troglodyte brethren are creating for the earth and all its unwary peoples. Surely, no one would want to wish this on the poor old cooter, now would they?
That’s heat, I meant heat, like the heat of the interior of the sun, f’instance, or maybe the lowest ring of Dante’s inferno with the devil repeatedly stickin him in the ass with his flaming pitchfork, even before he’s officially cashed it in.
Come to think of it, what’s even worse to contemplate should an artery suddenly clog up in the the dear old loggerhead’s noggin rendering him hopelessly incapacitated, why you just know that the Republican caucus would fracture into incoherent warring tribes just like the ridiculously religiously fanatic tribes of Iraq did when Sadaam’s head accidentally detached from his body as he swung at his much celebrated neck tie party.