Jim Inhofe

Voices of Oklahoma

U.S. Representative and Senator from Oklahoma from 1987, James Mountain Inhofe was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on November 17, 1934. He grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he attended public schools and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa. He served in the U.S. Army and worked in aviation, real estate, and insurance for three decades. He was president of Quaker Life Insurance Company before entering politics.
As a Republican he was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1966 and became a state senator in 1968. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1974 and for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. He was a three-term mayor of Tulsa from 1978 to 1984.
In 1986 he ran again for the U.S. House from the First District and was elected. He has sense won reelection three more times.
In 1994, when Sen. David Boren resigned to become president of the University of Oklahoma, Inhofe won Boren’s U.S. Senate seat in a special election. Two years later, in 1996, he was reelected for his first full term. November 16, 2014 he won election to his fourth term ending January 3, 2021.
His committee assignments have included Armed Services, Indian Affair, and Environment and Public Works.