Jon Kyl: Senate Whip, Treasury Holds and a 2018 Return in McCain's Seat

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Jon Kyl was born in Oakland, Nebraska, in 1942 and grew up in Iowa, where his father, John Henry Kyl, served in Congress. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Arizona, where he edited the Arizona Law Review, and worked as a lawyer and lobbyist in Phoenix and Denver before winning Arizona's 4th District House seat in 1986. There he backed the 1987 Abandoned Shipwrecks Act, which asserted federal title to historic wrecks and transferred it to the states. He won a Senate seat in 1994 over Democrat Sam Coppersmith and in 2006 beat Jim Pederson in a costly race shaped by immigration, where his leave first and reapply proposal differed from John McCain's approach.

Kyl rose to policy committee chairman, conference chairman and, in late 2007, minority whip, and Time named him one of America's 10 best senators in 2006. With Dianne Feinstein he turned a stalled victims' rights amendment into the Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004, and his long push against online betting produced the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, attached at midnight to must pass legislation. His 2010 objection to working through Christmas week on the Zadroga Act and a 2011 Planned Parenthood figure that his office said was not intended to be a factual statement drew criticism from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. He retired in 2013, joined Covington and Burling, guided Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, and in 2018 was appointed to John McCain's seat.

• In 2010 he placed holds on six Treasury nominees until the department issued rules to enforce the gambling law.
• His 2018 appointment made him only the sixth person since 1913 to return to the Senate by appointment.
• During that four month return he voted to confirm Kavanaugh and against the First Step Act, then resigned on December 31 for Martha McSally.
• Jeff Flake succeeded him when he first retired in 2013.
• He announced a dementia diagnosis in December 2025 and died in Phoenix on September 17, 2026, at 84, leaving his papers to the University of Arizona.