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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – From his high-profile spot in the thick of Senate action, Mitch McConnell sometimes glances back to the corner seat he occupied long ago during his days as a Senate newcomer.
McConnell, just starting his fifth term, has risen from the back bench to minority leader, and now the Republican known as a cunning, hard-hitting political strategist is about to achieve another milestone.
On Saturday, McConnell will surpass former Sen. Wendell Ford as the longest-serving Kentucky senator.
Ford served 8,772 days as a senator, according to the Senate historian's office.
"I do occasionally, and at a time like this, will look back at that last seat in the corner and remember those early days," McConnell said, recalling that "the light's not even very good back there."
"It's nice to have moved to the first seat" among Senate Republicans, he said.
The 66-year-old McConnell ranks 17th in overall tenure in the Senate.
McConnell admits his chances of eclipsing the Kentucky longevity record seemed improbable in 1984, when he defeated Democratic Sen. Walter "Dee" Huddleston by just over 5,000 votes out of 1.29 million votes cast.
McConnell was the only Republican challenger to oust a Democratic senator that year. He was boosted by Republican President Ronald Reagan's landslide re-election win in Kentucky.
Democrats dominated the Bluegrass state at the time, making McConnell a prime target from the start of his Senate career. "I was certainly swimming upstream in the early days here at home," McConnell said.
Still, it wasn't unusual for Kentucky Republicans to occupy Senate seats. Before McConnell, fellow Republicans Thruston Morton, Marlow Cook and John Sherman Cooper served in the last half of the 20th century.
Huddleston isn't surprised by his one-time rival's long Senate career, saying he saw a doggedness in McConnell.
"He's tended to business," Huddleston said. "He's totally immersed in the job and in the politics of the job. So he's had a successful run, and I don't see anything in the future that's going to change it."
That 1984 campaign spotlighted McConnell's ability to put his political opponents on the defensive.
McConnell unleashed a famous commercial of a bloodhound searching for Huddleston to claim the incumbent had a less-than-stellar Senate attendance record. Huddleston said the ad was based on a "false premise," but concedes he didn't take it seriously enough and should have countered it.
"His objective is to win, period. And whatever it takes, he'll do it," Huddleston said.
Beyond his own success, McConnell is widely credited as chief mastermind behind a Republican ascendancy in Kentucky, where the GOP holds both U.S. Senate seats, four of six congressional seats and controls the state Senate.
Democratic political consultant Danny Briscoe said McConnell tapped into Kentucky's conservative leanings, especially in federal elections. McConnell built a statewide GOP organization that led to a string of successes, even in Democratic strongholds, and gave the senator a ready-made structure for his own campaigns, Briscoe said.
"In the modern Republican Party in Kentucky, he certainly is both the architect and the father of it," Briscoe said.
As for his legislative record, McConnell points to the tobacco buyout as his most notable accomplishment.
The buyout - which came amid declining demand for tobacco as U.S. smoking rates dropped - is scheduled to inject about $2.5 billion into Kentucky through payments to one-time tobacco quotaholders over 10 years, though many opted for lump-sum payments.
The payments, coming from assessments against tobacco companies, offers compensation for the loss of government-granted tobacco allotments, or quotas, that established how much leaf the quotaholders were allowed to sell each year.
McConnell engineered the buyout's passage in 2004 by attaching it to a corporate tax bill with broad congressional support. The buyout ended the federal tobacco program that for decades had been a staple in Kentucky, the nation's top burley producer, by setting price and production controls on U.S. leaf.
"I don't think there's anybody that could have gotten that done except him," said Sam Moore, former president of the Kentucky Farm Bureau. "I think he used every bit of knowledge he had in the way the system worked to accomplish that. He ran into several roadblocks, but stayed with it until he got it done."
The buyout also will have lasting implications for a state with high cancer rates, McConnell said.
"I think it will help change the public health attitudes of our state," McConnell said.
"When the growing of tobacco was so pervasive, the view was that you should use it. It's like if you work at Toyota, you drive a Toyota; or if you work at Ford, you drive a Ford."
McConnell said steering federal money to Kentucky universities was another chief accomplishment.
Having cast more than 8,000 Senate votes, McConnell deflected a question about his biggest disappointment: "I'll let others pick those out."
He was denied the coveted role of Senate majority leader after strong Democratic gains in the 2006 election relegated Republicans to minority status by the slimmest of margins. Democrats padded their majority in last year's election, but Republicans still can muster enough strength to block legislation.
"You don't win all the time," he said. "I think what I've learned over the years ... is that most setbacks are not terminal. You wake up the next day and you live to fight another battle."
McConnell plans to recognize his milestone as Kentucky's longest-serving senator with a Senate speech Monday paying tribute to Ford, his former Democratic colleague and sometimes-rival. He did the same when he surpassed John Sherman Cooper's record as the longest-serving Republican senator from Kentucky.
It was Cooper who introduced McConnell to Washington by giving the 22-year-old a Senate internship. In his speech years later, McConnell called Cooper his hero and said he was "a role model for life."
In coming days, when McConnell finds himself in a reminiscent mood, he might catch a glimpse of his old seat in the corner.
"There's no question there's a big difference between being in the last chair and being in the first chair," he said.
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