Growing power of women on display in new Senate
WASHINGTON For the first time in history, women will occupy onefifth of the seats in the Senate and white males will no longer hold a majority in the Democratic caucus in theHouse.
Those shifts reflect the growing electoral power of women and minorities and the Democratic Party’s determination to harness that energy to build a diverse coalition.
The gains made by women in the Senate were the first achievement noted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada when he discussed the election results at a news conference Wednesday morning.
Reid noted that when he was first elected to the Senate, in 1986, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, aMaryland Democrat, was the only woman in the chamber. There are 17 women in today’s Senate: 12 Democrats and five Republicans. That figure will increase to 20 in January— 16 Democrats and four Republicans — when the newly elected senators are seated.
“We’re the party of diversity,” Reid said. “Look at the results from all over the country.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote in a statement that the losses in the presidentialandSenateelectionsshowthat the party has “a period of reflection and recalibration ahead.”
In addition to holding all six of the seats occupied by women who were up for re- election this year, Democratic women picked up four: Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Mazie Hirono in Hawaii, Tammy Baldwin inWisconsin and Heidi Heitkamp inNorthDakota.
Hirono is the first AsianAmerican woman to be elected to the Senate and Baldwin will be the first openly gay senator.
It was a major victory for PattyMurray, aWashington Democrat who was elected to the Senate in 1992, a year when four other women were also elected. Tapped in 2010 to head the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Murray had the daunting task of defending her party’s majority this year.
“We had a toughmap. We knew we had to be aggressive,” Murray said as she reflected on the campaign at a news conferenceWednesday. “We recruited and nominated the most Democratic women ever. … I believe that is a great thing for our country.”
The number of Republican women senators dropped from five to four, after two retirements and the pickup of one seat by Deb Fischer inNebraska.
With Democrats expected to hold about 200 House seats once all the races are decided, white men are projected to represent slightly less than 50 percent of the Democratic caucus.
It would be the first time that white men do not hold the majority of a major party caucus in theHouse.