Former Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl Passes Away at 88

Herb Kohl, who represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate for 24 years and was a majority owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, died after a brief illness Wednesday. He was 88. A Milwaukee native, Kohl graduated from UW-Madison in 1956. He was roommates with former Brewers owner and MLB commissioner Bud Selig. Kohl went on to earn an MBA from Harvard in 1958 before taking over as president of the Kohl’s Corporation supermarket and department store chain in 1970. Kohl got his first major taste of the political sphere in 1975, when he was named chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. In 1988, he took an even bigger step into that sphere, running for the United States Senate. In the years following, Kohl would win reelection over Bob Welch (1994), John Gillespie (2000) and Robert Lorge (2006) before opting not to seek re-election in 2012.