MANSFIELD, Michael Joseph (Mike), Congress, MT (1903-2001)

Senate Years of Service: 1953-1977
Party: Democrat

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.

Bibliography Scribner 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.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present