Capital Scene: Louisville Slugger

ON his office wall, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has two framed newspaper articles from October 1, 1994, the day after he engineered a successful filibuster to kill Democratic campaign-finance legislation. “Senate Stalemate Kills Campaign Finance Reform Bill,” reads the front-page headline of one of them, from the Washington Post, with a picture of a harried-looking Majority Leader George Mitchell denouncing the bill’s opponents as cynics bent on preserving “the current discredited system” of campaign finance. One of the chief targets of that barb was none other than Mitch McConnell, who now points to the article with an impish smile.

“We were that close to losing in 1994,” he says, holding his fingers half an inch apart. Campaign-finance bills had passed the Democratic-controlled House and Senate, and the last big hurdle to passage was a conference reconciling the two bills. McConnell had already begun consulting with a downtown lawyer on challenging the legislation in court. But then he realized that he could block the conference by filibustering the appointment of conferees. The Kentucky Republican set up a cot outside the Senate floor, talked about the constitutional transgressions of the legislation for seven hours straight, organized 23 colleagues to take turns speaking through the night, and killed the last major initiative of the Democratic Congress.

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Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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ON his office wall, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has two framed newspaper articles from October 1, 1994, the day after he engineered a successful filibuster to kill Democratic campaign-finance legislation. “Senate Stalemate Kills Campaign Finance Reform Bill,” reads the front-page headline of one of them, from the Washington Post, with a picture of a harried-looking Majority Leader George Mitchell denouncing the bill’s opponents as cynics bent on preserving “the current discredited system” of campaign finance. One of the chief targets of that barb was none other than Mitch McConnell, who now points to the article with an impish smile.

“We were that close to losing in 1994,” he says, holding his fingers half an inch apart. Campaign-finance bills had passed the Democratic-controlled House and Senate, and the last big hurdle to passage was a conference reconciling the two bills. McConnell had already begun consulting with a downtown lawyer on challenging the legislation in court. But then he realized that he could block the conference by filibustering the appointment of conferees. The Kentucky Republican set up a cot outside the Senate floor, talked about the constitutional transgressions of the legislation for seven hours straight, organized 23 colleagues to take turns speaking through the night, and killed the last major initiative of the Democratic Congress.