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Muriel Humphrey was born Muriel Faye Buck in 1912 and grew up in Huron, South Dakota, where she worked as a bookkeeper while attending Huron College and met Hubert Humphrey. After they married in 1936, she paid the bills as a typist for the Department of Government at Louisiana State University while he did graduate work there, typing the papers that kept the department running. The family later settled in Waverly, Minnesota, raising four children. In the 1960 Democratic primaries she campaigned across Wisconsin against John F. Kennedy's operation, giving speeches at a time when candidates' wives rarely spoke on policy, and after Lyndon B. Johnson chose her husband as his running mate in 1964, she became second lady.

The birth of her granddaughter Victoria with Down syndrome made her an advocate for people with intellectual disabilities at a time when doctors urged families to institutionalize such children. After Hubert Humphrey died of bladder cancer in January 1978, Governor Rudy Perpich appointed her to his Senate seat, making her Minnesota's first woman senator. She joined the Foreign Relations Committee, backed Jimmy Carter's foreign policy, pushed to extend the Equal Rights Amendment ratification deadline and sponsored the Mental Health Advocacy Act of 1978, then chose not to run in the special election after consulting Carter. She married childhood friend Max Brown in 1981, later said her politics sat further left than her husband's, and died in 1998 at 86.

• She served on the President's Committee for people with intellectual disabilities from 1966 to 1969.
• During the 1967 and 1968 campaign cycles she toured care facilities on Long Island with New York Times reporters along.
• A 1970 speech she gave on public attitudes toward Down syndrome was reprinted in a medical journal.
• She was the first spouse of a former vice president to go on to serve in Congress.
• As a private citizen she spoke out in support of women's access to abortion.

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Millard Tydings was born in 1890 in Havre de Grace, Maryland, graduated from the Maryland Agricultural College in 1910, and worked as a civil engineer for the B&O Railroad before passing the bar in 1913. In World War I he served as a division machine gun officer, rose to lieutenant colonel, and earned the Distinguished Service Cross and Army Distinguished Service Medal. He became speaker of the Maryland House by 1920, entered the U.S. House in 1922 and the Senate in 1926. He co-sponsored the Tydings-McDuffie Act setting a path to Philippine independence, introduced a 1934 resolution condemning Nazi persecution of Jews, and proposed Puerto Rican independence in 1936.

He opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1937 court packing plan, and in 1938 Roosevelt campaigned in Maryland for his primary opponent, Congressman David J. Lewis, but Tydings won easily. In 1950 he chaired the committee investigating Joseph McCarthy's claims of communists in the State Department, including the charge against scholar Owen Lattimore, and its report called the accusations a hoax. That fall McCarthy allies circulated a composite photo pairing Tydings with former Communist Party leader Earl Browder, and Tydings lost to John Marshall Butler. He won the 1956 Senate nomination but withdrew for health reasons and died in 1961 at his farm, Oakington.

• He interrupted McCarthy 85 times in his first 250 minutes of testimony.
• The composite joined a 1938 photo of Tydings at a radio with a 1940 photo of Browder speaking.
• Its caption quoted him saying thank you, sir, words he used to dismiss Browder as a committee witness.
• Biographer Caroline H. Keith wrote that his harshness left him without allies when the backlash came.
• The Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge carries I-95 over the Susquehanna, and his son Joseph won a Senate seat in 1964.

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Mike Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1930 to French-Canadian immigrants, spoke only French until seven, and was held back in third grade with undiagnosed dyslexia. He enlisted in 1951, served in the Army Counterintelligence Corps in France, and earned an economics degree at Columbia on the GI Bill. In 1956, broke, he moved to Alaska and worked as a brakeman on the Alaska Railroad. He won an Alaska House seat in 1962 and became speaker after reneging on a promise to Warren Taylor. In 1968, with consultant Joseph Napolitan and the film A Man for Alaska flown to villages, he defeated 81 year old Senator Ernest Gruening while blurring his own antiwar views.

In the Senate he opposed nuclear testing on Amchitka, attempted a five month filibuster against renewing the draft in 1971, and read the Pentagon Papers into the record at a late night subcommittee hearing. In 1973 his amendment barring court challenges to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline passed after Vice President Spiro Agnew broke a 49 to 49 tie. He lost the 1980 primary to Clark Gruening, Ernest's grandson, then faced business failures and bankruptcy in 2004. His 2008 presidential campaign produced viral videos, and in 2020, at 89, he ran again at the urging of teenagers who later founded the Gravel Institute. He was buried at Arlington in June 2023 without a gun salute.

• A summer job as a soda jerk had him handing out flyers for local candidates.
• In 1959 he toured 44 states dressed as Paul Revere to promote tax reform.
• He relied on the Speech or Debate Clause to protect himself when releasing the Pentagon Papers.
• He angered a key backer by voting to approve F-15 sales to Saudi Arabia.
• One 2008 ad showed him silently staring at the camera before throwing a rock into a lake.

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Mike Enzi was born in Bremerton, Washington, in 1944 and raised in Thermopolis and Sheridan, Wyoming, where his father Elmer ran shoe stores. He earned an accounting degree at George Washington University and an MBA in retail marketing from the University of Denver, served in the Wyoming Air National Guard from 1967 to 1973 after a medical rejection for glycosuria, and in 1969 married Diana and opened NZ Shoes in Gillette. Encouraged by Alan Simpson, he defeated Mayor Cliff Davis in 1974 and dealt with the boomtown's water rationing by building a pipeline from Moorcroft. He later served in both chambers of the Wyoming legislature.

When Simpson retired in 1996, Enzi won a nine candidate Republican primary that included John Barrasso, then the general election. In the Senate he was ranked among the most conservative members yet among the Republicans most likely to work with Democrats, guided by his 80-20 rule of passing the 80 percent senators agree on. He chaired the HELP Committee and became the first accountant to chair the Budget Committee. He opposed the Affordable Care Act and the Paris Agreement while pushing to ease Cuba travel and trade limits. He retired in 2021, succeeded by Cynthia Lummis, and died at 77 months later after a bicycle accident near Gillette.

• In 1997 his request to use a laptop on the Senate floor was rejected in committee, with only Rick Santorum backing him.
• Robert Byrd objected that the clicking of keys would be irritating.
• He led the effort to put Sacagawea on the dollar coin and asked that it be unveiled at Fort Washakie.
• After reading C.J. Box's novel Free Fire, he asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to close Yellowstone's zone of death loophole.
• He co-sponsored the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act with Democrat Byron Dorgan in 2009.

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Mike DeWine helped write the 1980s law that restored Ohio's death penalty as a conservative Catholic state senator, then on June 16, 2026, as governor, called for abolishing capital punishment. His career began after law school in 1972 as an assistant prosecutor in Greene County, where he was elected county prosecutor in 1976. In 1993, while he was lieutenant governor, his 22 year old daughter Rebecca was killed in a car crash, and he later pushed for a 0.08 percent national blood alcohol limit and tire aging safety rules. He lost a 1992 Senate race to John Glenn after asking what on earth Glenn had done, then won a Senate seat in the 1994 Republican wave.

In the Senate he joined the bipartisan Gang of 14 to preserve the judicial filibuster and was one of two Republicans to vote against shielding gun makers from liability suits, but lost to Sherrod Brown by more than 12 points in 2006. As attorney general from 2010 he cleared a backlog of nearly 14,000 untested rape kits, sued opioid makers, and used the Art Modell law to keep the Columbus Crew in Ohio. As governor from 2018 he closed schools and events early in the COVID-19 pandemic, signed the heartbeat bill and permitless carry, vetoed a ban on gender affirming care for minors that lawmakers overrode, and weighs commuting more than 108 death sentences.

• After the 2019 Dayton shooting, a vigil crowd chanted do something and he proposed a 17 point gun plan with red flag provisions.
• His COVID measures included canceling the Arnold Sports Festival and a Vax-a-Million lottery.
• After his veto was overridden in January 2024, he issued executive orders banning gender affirming surgery for minors.
• He cited lack of deterrence, decades long appeals, and the toll on prison staff as reasons to end executions.
• In an August 2026 New York Times op-ed he paired stricter border enforcement with expanded legal immigration.

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Mel Carnahan was born in 1934 and raised near Elsinore, Missouri, the son of Congressman A.S.J. Carnahan, later John F. Kennedy's ambassador to Sierra Leone. He handed out flyers for his father at 12, saw Harry Truman campaign in St. Louis in 1948, and met his wife Jean at a Baptist youth group in Washington. He fainted during an Air Force blood test and spent his service at a desk, later earning a private pilot's license. After law school he moved to Rolla, became a municipal judge at 26, won a state House seat in 1962, and as majority floor leader pushed through a 1965 ban on racial discrimination in public places before losing a 1966 state Senate race.

After 14 years in law, school board service and the family charcoal business, he won state treasurer in 1980 and replaced favoritism in bank deposits with a formula tied to community lending. He lost the 1984 governor's primary after walking over 300 miles, won lieutenant governor in 1988, and clashed with Governor John Ashcroft over who held power while Ashcroft was in Japan. Elected governor in 1992, he handled a school funding ruling and the Great Flood of 1993. Challenging Ashcroft for the Senate in 2000, he died on October 16 when the Cessna piloted by his son Randy crashed near Hillsboro, and voters elected him anyway.

• The Outstanding Schools Act of 1993 raised $315 million for smaller classes, teacher pay and technology.
• After the 1993 flood he oversaw the buyout and relocation of towns such as Pattonsburg.
• He called a special session to impeach fellow Democrat Judith Moriarty after she refused to resign.
• At Pope John Paul II's request in 1999, he commuted the death sentence of Darrell Mease.
• Acting Governor Roger Wilson pledged to appoint Jean Carnahan if voters chose her late husband.

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Max Cleland grew up in Lithonia, Georgia, graduated from Stetson University and Emory, and served as an Army captain with the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam, earning the Silver Star and Bronze Star. On April 8, 1968, a month before his tour ended, he flew to Hill 471 near Khe Sanh to set up a radio relay. Seeing a grenade on the ground after the helicopter lifted off, he reached for it; the blast cost him both legs above the knee and his right forearm. Marine David Lloyd used his own web belt as a tourniquet and later described a young U.S. soldier crying that the grenade was his, having left his pins unbent.

Cleland entered the Georgia Senate in 1971, ran the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter from 1977, and served 14 years as Georgia secretary of state, where his penny stock law became a national model. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 for Sam Nunn's seat, he voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution, which he later called the worst vote of his career. He had led Saxby Chambliss by 22 points in May 2002, but an ad showing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein beside his face over a Homeland Security vote helped Chambliss win. He later served on the 9/11 Commission, the Export-Import Bank board and the American Battle Monuments Commission.

• He was a consultant on the 1978 film Coming Home, set in a 1968 VA hospital.
• His vote against the Homeland Security bill was over a provision stripping civil service protections from unionized workers.
• Fellow Vietnam veterans John McCain and Chuck Hagel condemned the ad produced with consultant Rick Wilson.
• He resigned from the 9/11 Commission, accusing the Bush administration of withholding documents.
• He introduced John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and died in 2021 at 79.

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Martin Van Buren was born in 1782 in Kinderhook, New York, the first president born a U.S. citizen, and grew up speaking Dutch in his father Abraham's tavern, a hub of local politics. Apprenticed to the Federalist Silvester family, he was told to dress like the ruling class and became the impeccably polite Red Fox. He married Hannah Hoes, who died of tuberculosis in 1819, leaving four sons, and he never remarried. As a state senator and attorney general he broke from family factions like the Clintons and built the Albany Regency, often called the first modern political machine, run on patronage, partisan newspapers and an alliance with Tammany Hall.

Entering the U.S. Senate in 1821, he argued that national parties would restrain sectional hostility. He backed William Crawford in 1824, then organized support for Andrew Jackson and helped pass the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. As secretary of state he sided with the Eatons in the Petticoat Affair, and after John C. Calhoun cast the tie breaking vote rejecting his nomination as minister to Britain, Jackson put him on the 1832 ticket. His presidency began with the Panic of 1837, and he lost to William Henry Harrison in 1840. In 1848 he ran on the Free Soil ticket, drawing enough New York votes to cost Lewis Cass the election.

• Opponents renamed him Martin Van Ruin as he pushed an independent treasury during the depression.
• His administration carried out the Cherokee removal known as the Trail of Tears.
• He sided against the Amistad captives, who won their freedom at the Supreme Court.
• He refused to annex Texas, which cost him the 1844 Democratic nomination to James K. Polk.
• Supporters of Old Kinderhook formed OK clubs, helping popularize the word OK.

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Mark Hanna was born in Ohio in 1837, attended high school in Cleveland with John D. Rockefeller, and was expelled from college for distributing mock programs at a solemn ceremony. His early ventures failed: an uninsured oil refinery burned and a Great Lakes steamship sank. He served briefly in a National Guard unit defending Washington but hired a substitute during the Civil War. He married Charlotte Rhodes over the objections of her Democratic father, coal and steel magnate Daniel Rhodes, joined the family business, and was a millionaire by 40. He first backed John Sherman, then allied with William McKinley, the lawyer who had defended miners striking against Hanna's company in 1876.

When the Panic of 1893 left Governor McKinley personally liable for more than $100,000 on a friend's loans, Hanna organized wealthy donors to clear the debt while McKinley refused to learn their names. In 1896 against William Jennings Bryan and free silver, Hanna kept McKinley home in Canton and assessed banks and corporations for a record war chest. After the win he took Sherman's Senate seat when Sherman became secretary of state. He resisted war with Spain, opposed Theodore Roosevelt as vice president, and after McKinley's 1901 assassination swung the canal vote to Panama. He died of typhoid fever in early 1904.

• Railroads cut fares so delegations could visit Canton, with leaders submitting their remarks to the campaign in advance.
• Hearst's papers drew him in a suit covered with dollar signs, working the president like a puppet.
• His Senate appointment by the Ohio legislature came amid rumors of kidnapped legislators.
• He warned the 1900 convention that only one heartbeat would separate Roosevelt from the presidency.
• He handed every senator a Nicaraguan postage stamp showing a smoking volcano to sink the Nicaragua route.

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Lyman Trumbull was born in Connecticut, taught school and studied law in Georgia in the 1830s, and settled in Illinois. After the 1837 mob murder of abolitionist publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy, Trumbull, then no abolitionist, wrote that he would have defended Lovejoy's press against mob violence. As Illinois secretary of state he demanded liquidation of a failing state bank and was forced out. In the 1840s he won Jarrot v. Jarrot for Joseph Jarrot, an enslaved man suing for freedom and wages, arguing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 overrode Illinois grandfather clauses and ending the legal footing for slavery in the state.

In the 1855 Senate election in the Illinois legislature, Abraham Lincoln led with about 45 votes but, to stop a pro-slavery candidate, told his backers to switch to Trumbull, who won by one vote. The two co-founded the Illinois Republican Party, and Trumbull later helped steer moderate delegates to Lincoln in 1860. As Judiciary Committee chair he wrote the Confiscation Acts, reported the 13th Amendment using Northwest Ordinance language, and drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed over Andrew Johnson's veto. He criticized Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, then voted to acquit Johnson at his impeachment trial, and in 1895 argued for Eugene V. Debs before the Supreme Court.

• Illinois slavery persisted through grandfather claims tied to French settlers and 99 year labor contracts.
• The Confiscation Acts treated enslaved people used to aid the rebellion as seizable contraband.
• He called the Tenure of Office Act charges against Johnson flimsy and warned against removal for policy disagreements.
• After leaving the Senate in 1873 he moved through the Liberal Republicans, the Democrats and the Populists.
• He argued the Debs case alongside a young Clarence Darrow after the Pullman strike.