Senate’s ‘designated curmudgeon’ keeps Boy Scout motto on desk

Sen. Jeff Sessions says he’s earned a new nickname among his colleagues in the upper chamber: the “designated curmudgeon.”

In a glowing profile, the Alabama Republican tells Mobile’s Press-Register newspaper that his strong opposition to careless spending is the reason behind the dubious title he’s managed to acquire.

But the self-appointed curmudgeon, 65, isn’t a total grouch. Sessions, who was in the Boy Scouts, reveals that he still keeps in touch with the eight other original members of his troop. He’s also one of nearly a dozen current senators to have earned the highest rank of Eagle Scout.

The lawmaker even keeps a reminder of his scouting days close at hand. On the back of the nameplate on his desk in the Russell Senate Office Building, Sessions glued the Boy Scout motto, “Be prepared.” 

Dr. Judy Bonner, the interim president of the University of Alabama and a childhood classmate of Sessions’s, says the senator has stayed the same since arriving in Washington in 1997. 

Bonner — who happens to be the older sister of Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) — tells the paper, “The Senate has not changed him — and I mean that in the best possible sense. At heart, he’s still an Eagle Scout.”

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