Marlow Cook

Marlow Webster Cook, Sr.
United States Senator for Kentucky
In office December 17, 1968 – December 27, 1974
Preceded by	Thruston B. Morton
Succeeded by	Wendell Ford
Born	July 27, 1926 Akron, Erie County, New York
Died	February 4, 2016 (aged 89) Sarasota, Florida
Resting place	Unknown
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Nancy Remmers Cook
Children	Caroline, Nancy, Louise, and Marlow Cook, Jr Parents: Floyd Truman and Mary Lee Webster Cook
Alma mater	University of Louisville (Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws)
Religion	Roman Catholic
Military Service
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Navy
Battles/wars	World War II (both European and Asiatic theaters of operation)

Marlow Webster Cook, Sr. (July 27, 1926 – February 4, 2016), was a Moderate Republican one-term United States Senator for his adopted state of Kentucky. He was appointed by a former political adversary, Republican Governor Louie B. Nunn, to succeed the retiring Thruston B. Morton in the Senate. After his defeat for reelection, he resigned from the Senate in December 1974, to permit his Democrat successor, then Governor Wendell Ford, to gain a jump in seniority.^[1]

He ran the Cook and Henderson lobbying firm; one of its principal clients was the Tobacco Institute. Kentucky is one of the two leading states in the growing of tobacco.^[2]

Cook was born in Akron in Erie County in western New York. He moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1943. He soon joined the United States Navy, with duties on submarines in both the European and Asiatic theaters of operations during World War II. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Louisville and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948 and a law degree in 1950. He practiced law in Louisville until 1957.^[3]

Cook was elected in 1957 and 1959 to two two-year terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives. He served on a special committee which analyzed educational issues in the state.^[3]

Cook was subsequently elected to two terms as the Jefferson County Judge/Executive, the equivalent of a mayoral or county executive position administering affairs in the populous county. He was elected judge/executive in 1961 and, along with fellow Moderate Republican William O. Cowger, a native of Nebraska who became the mayor of Louisville and subsequently served two terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1967 to 1971. In 1965, Cook ran for reelection as county judge with Republican mayoral candidate Kenneth Schmied, who went on to win the office and was the last Republican mayor in Louisville. Cook and Schmied called themselves the "All American Team." Cook was the first Republican in the county judge position since 1943, the year that Cook had first arrived in Louisville.^[3]

In May 1967, Cook and Louie B. Nunn contested the Republican gubernatorial nomination to succeed Democrat Edward Thompson Breathitt (1924–2003). Nunn, more conservative than Cook, narrowly won the nomination and then defeated the Democrat Henry Ward.

The next year, Cook ran for U.S. Senate and defeated the strongly conservative and non-interventionist Eugene Edward Siler, Sr., in the Republican primary,^[4] who ran proposing the removal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam by Christmas.^[5][6] Cook then only narrowly defeated the Democrat, Katherine Graham Peden (1926–2006),^[7] a former state commerce commissioner, as Richard M. Nixon scored the second of his three presidential victories in Kentucky.

Cook's strain of Republicanism was subsequently continued by Addison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell, an acolyte of liberal former Senator John Sherman Cooper and a former Jefferson County judge/executive who narrowly unseated Democratic SenatorWalter Darlington "Dee" Huddleston in 1984, as Ronald Reagan carried Kentucky and forty-eight other states in the presidential contest. McConnell, the current Senate Minority Leader in the 117th Congress, is an establishmentarian who has shilled for Democrat election fraud.^[8]

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