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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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