Herb Kohl: Turning Down Michael Jordan to Keep the Milwaukee Bucks Home

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Herb Kohl was born in Milwaukee in 1935 to Max and Mary Kohl, Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia who arrived in the 1920s with nothing. He attended Washington High School, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1956, where his roommate was future baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and earned a Harvard MBA in 1958 before serving in the Army Reserve. With his brother he grew the family business into a chain of 50 grocery stores plus department stores, pharmacies and liquor stores, becoming president of Kohl's in 1970 before the family sold the company to BATUS Inc. in 1978. As chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 1975, he helped deliver supermajorities in both legislative chambers in 1976, then stepped down in 1977.

In 1985 Kohl bought the Milwaukee Bucks from Jim Fitzgerald for $18 million to keep the team from leaving. In 2003 he rejected a $170 million offer from Michael Jordan because he could not be sure the team would stay, and in 2014 he sold it for $550 million to Wes Edens and Marc Lasry, who committed to keeping it in Wisconsin. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988 over Susan Engeleiter, he largely self-funded four terms and compiled an independent record before retiring in 2012, saying there is something to be said for not staying in office too long.

• His Bucks cycled through six head coaches, and coach Don Nelson resigned in 1987.
• After the Bucks won the 2021 NBA title, the new owners put him in the lead parade car and gave him a championship ring.
• He voted for the 2001 tax cuts and a balanced budget amendment but opposed NAFTA and CAFTA.
• In 2005 he won a requirement that handguns sold in the U.S. include child safety locks, attached to a larger bill.
• He gave $25 million toward the University of Wisconsin's Kohl Center, and his foundation awards $400,000 a year to Wisconsin students and teachers.