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Senate Years of Service: 1953-1977 Party: Democrat
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MANSFIELD, Michael Joseph (Mike), a Representative and a Senator from Montana; born in New York City,
March 16, 1903; moved with his family to Great Falls, Cascade County, Mont., in
1906; attended the public schools in Great Falls; served as a seaman when only
fourteen years old in the United States Navy during the First World War, as a
private in the United States Army in 1919-1920, and as a private first class in
the United States Marine Corps 1920-1922; worked as a miner and mining engineer
in Butte, Mont., 1922-1930; attended the Montana School of Mines at Butte in
1927 and 1928; graduated from Montana State University at Missoula in 1933, and
received a masters degree from that institution in 1934; also attended the
University of California at Los Angeles in 1936 and 1937; professor of history
and political science at the Montana State University 1933-1942; elected as a
Democrat to the Seventy-eighth Congress; reelected to the four succeeding
Congresses (January 3, 1943-January 3, 1953); was not a candidate for
reelection in 1952, having become a candidate for the Senate; chairman, Special
Committee on Campaign Expenditures (Eighty-first Congress); was elected to the
United States Senate in 1952; reelected in 1958, 1964, and 1970 and served from
January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1977; Democratic whip 1957-1961; majority leader
1961-1977; chairman, Committee on Rules and Administration (Eighty-seventh
Congress), Select Committee on Secret and Confidential Documents (Ninety-second
Congress), Special Committee on Secret and Confidential Documents (Ninety-third
Congress); was not a candidate for reelection in 1976; Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary to Japan 1977-1988; East Asian advisor, Goldman, Sachs;
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 19, 1989; was a resident
of Washington, D.C. until his death due to congestive heart failure on October
5, 2001; interment in Arlington National Cemetery.
BibliographyScribner Encyclopedia of American Lives; Valeo,
Francis R. Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader: A Different Kind of Senate,
1961-1976. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1999; Oberdorfer, Don.
Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman
and Diplomat. Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2003.
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