The new class of women elected to the 116th Congress will add gender and racial diversity to the body overall and to their state-level delegations.
In the 115th Congress, 11 states -- Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, South Carolina and Kentucky -- had no women in their congressional delegations. Vermont has never sent a woman to Congress.
On Nov. 6, at least two of those states sent women to Congress. Pennsylvania elected four women to the House, and Oklahoma elected one when Democrat Kendra Horn won an upset victory against a Republican incumbent.
Texas, which has never sent a Hispanic woman to Congress, elected two Tuesday night: Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia, both Democrats.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old Hispanic activist who won a surprising primary victory against a 10-term white incumbent, is the youngest woman elected to Congress. Ayanna Pressley, a 44-year-old member of the Boston City Council who scored a similar upset win, is the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. And Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, will be Connecticut’s first black congresswoman.
Voters in two states also elected the country’s first Muslim women to the House: Rashida Tlaib, a former state legislator running in Detroit, and Ilhan Omar, a state legislator running in Minneapolis. Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee, will be the first Somali-American in Congress. Democrats Sharice Davids of Kansas and Debra Haaland of New Mexico became the first Native American women elected to Congress.
This article provided by Bloomberg News.