Path to Power
James Paul David Bunning was born on Oct. 23,1931, in Campbell County in northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. He grew up attending Catholic schools and playing baseball. Bunning started playing in the minor leagues in 1950, but his father insisted that he attend college, so he graduated from Xavier University in 1953 with a degree in economics.
Bunning made it to the major leagues in 1956 and played primarily for the Detroit Tigers and the Philadelphia Phillies. He threw a no-hitter in 1958 and a perfect game in 1964. When he retired from baseball in 1971, he was second all-time in strikeouts and only the second pitcher in history, after the legendary Cy Young, to record 1,000 strikeouts and 100 wins in both the National and American leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.
Bunning displayed a knack for politics even during his baseball days when he helped form the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966.
Political Career
After retiring from baseball, Bunning returned to Kentucky and worked as an investment agent. In 1977, he won a seat on the Fort Thomas, Ky. City Council. He moved to the Kentucky Senate in 1979 and became its Republican leader. Bunning lost to Lt. Gov. Martha Layne Collins (D) in the 1983 governor’s race, but bounced back in 1986 to win a seat in the U.S. House from Kentucky’s 4th district.
Bunning ran for an open U.S. Senate seat in 1998, and faced then-Rep. Scotty Baesler (D-Ky.), a former basketball star at the University of Kentucky. With help from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Bunning had the financial edge and used it to run an ad of actors thanking Baesler in Spanish and Chinese for voting for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Bunning won by a margin of 49.7 to 49.2 percent. The race was decided by just 6,766 votes.
2004 Re-election Race
Bunning faced state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo (D) in his 2004 re-election bid. From the outset, it looked like the incumbent would win easily. He outspent Mongiardo, a physician who is against abortion rights and gay marriage and in favor of gun rights, roughly two-to-one. But Bunning hurt his cause with odd behavior, such as not giving the press advance notice of his appearances and traveling with a security guard, because, as he explained, “there may be strangers among us.” During one event, Bunning said that Mongiardo looked like one of Saddam Hussein’s sons.
In their only debate, held in October 2004, Bunning participated in a video feed from Washington and read his opening and closing statements from a teleprompter. Bunning accused Mongiardo’s camp of spreading rumors about his health and Mongiardo accused Bunning of conduct “unbecoming of a U.S. senator” and “unbecoming of a Kentucky gentleman.” The Louisville Courier-Journal asked afterward in an editorial: “Is [Bunning], as he ages, just becoming a more concentrated version of himself: more arrogant, more prickly? Certainly that would be a normal occurrence. Or is his increased belligerence an indication of something worse? Has Senator Bunning drifted into territory that indicates a serious health concern?”The race was nasty from both directions; at one point, the Republican state senate president accused Mongiardo of having a “limp wrist.”
In late October 2004, when a reporter asked Bunning about Army reservists who refused their missions because of insufficiently armored vehicles in Iraq, the senator said, “Uh, what are you talking about? I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t watch the news. And I have not read a newspaper in over six weeks. When I do watch some TV news, I watch Fox.” On Election Day, George W. Bush carried Kentucky with 60 percent of the vote but Bunning won by just two points, 51 to 49 percent. Asked about whether he had made mistakes in the campaign, Bunning said, “Sure we made mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. The only time I’ve ever been perfect was for about two hours and 10 minutes on June 21, 1964.”
Time magazine declared Bunning one of the five worst senators in 2006, saying he “shows little interest in policy unless it involves baseball.” (Bunning led the congressional charge against steroid use in baseball.) “His sharp questioning of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on fiscal matters during hearings over the past couple of years suggest he has the smarts to be an effective Senator but doesn’t put in the effort.”
In the Senate, Bunning sits on the Finance, Banking, Energy and Budget committees.
Bunning says on his web site that despite induction to the Hall of Fame and election to the U.S. Senate, the high point in his life was his marriage to Mary Catherine Theis. The pair have nine children and 35 grandchildren and live in Southgate, Ky.
Senate Retirement
Bunning announced in January 2009 that he would seek re-election to a third term in November 2010, but reversed course in July 2009 after opposition from Senate GOP leaders, most notably Senate minority leader and home-state colleague Mitch McConnell (R).
“To win a general election, a candidate has to be able to raise millions of dollars to get the message out to voters,” Bunning said. “Over the past year, some of the leaders of the Republican Party in the Senate have done everything in their power to dry up my fundraising. The simple fact is that I have not raised the funds necessary to run an effective campaign for the U.S. Senate.”
The 2010 open seat race will be competitive.
