Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a tearful farewell to his colleague and friend Sen. Lamar Alexander as the Tennessee Republican prepares for retirement.
McConnell and Alexander’s friendship traces back to 1969, when they first met in Washington. McConnell, now 78, was a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill, while Alexander, now 80, worked as an aide in Richard Nixon’s White House.
“I’ve known Lamar for more than 50 years,” McConnell said in his speech on Wednesday. “We met at the suggestion of his previous boss and mentor, Sen. Howard Baker, Jr. Either he suspected our paths might cross again later, or he just saw two serious young guys in need of some livelier social lives. Now, this may shock you, but I’m afraid young Lamar Alexander and young Mitch McConnell did not exactly go crazy and paint the town red. But I’ll take a five-decade friendship any day.”
Senate Majority Leader McConnell chokes up while bidding farewell to his friend, retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN):
“I’m sorry that, in a few more weeks, it’ll just be the rest of us left.” pic.twitter.com/PEVPkTsVu2
— The Recount (@therecount) December 2, 2020
The two developed their careers throughout the 1970s and 80s as they rose in the ranks of the Republican Party. McConnell first assumed office in 1985, and is now the highest-ranking member of Congress’s upper chamber. The two also share in their service to neighboring Southern states, with McConnell representing Kentucky.
Alexander has held a variety of roles, being elected governor of Tennessee twice in 1978 and 1982. He served as the Education secretary in the George H.W. Bush administration and also had a couple of unsuccessful bids for president.
“If you reviewed Sen. Alexander’s resume and results without knowing the man, you might suspect he arrived as an established hotshot and threw his weight around,” McConnell said. “But even as Lamar has mastered the levers of power here, his character has never been captured by Washington. Lamar’s remained clear that he’s just been on loan from Tennessee this whole time.”
During his own farewell speech, Alexander called for bringing Republicans and Democrats together in a highly partisan climate. He defended the filibuster and briefly highlighted what he deems as his greatest accomplishments while in the Senate. Among them, he cited the Great American Outdoors Act, which will pay for billions of dollars worth of backlogged maintenance projects for national parks across the country.
Alexander received the praise of occasional Senate rival, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who called him “a man of principle,” according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.
McConnell has long been open about his friendship with Alexander, telling the New York Times shortly after Alexander’s announcement he would retire that he had sought out his guidance regularly.
“I seek his counsel on a weekly basis on a whole variety of issues,” McConnell said in January. “He’s my closest friend in the Senate.”
