With more women running for elected office than ever before, children today are more…
A gender + politics fact for every state voting on Super Tuesday
Gender on the Ballot Team
| Mar 3, 2020
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Today is Super Tuesday. Voters in 14 states are going to the polls, making this the day when the most delegates will be allotted to Democratic presidential candidates: more than a third of all delegates for the Democratic National Convention are up for grabs on this one day.
Here’s a gender + politics fact about each state heading to the polls today:
Alabama
- The current governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, is the state’s first Republican woman governor. Interestingly, Ivey campaigned for Lurleen Wallace’s 1966 gubernatorial campaign; Wallace won and became the state’s first (and only) Democratic woman to serve as governor.
Arkansas
- The first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, Hattie Caraway, was elected in Arkansas in 1932.
California
- In 1992, California became the first state to have an all-woman team in the U.S. Senate: Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.
Colorado
- Colorado is one of only two states (Nevada is the other) to currently have a female majority is even one of its chambers: Colorado’s lower house has three more women than men.
Maine
- Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was the first woman to be elected to both houses of Congress: the House of Representatives in in 1940 and U.S. Senate in 1948. She also ran for president in 1964!
Massachusetts
- Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1974, becoming the first openly lesbian or gay candidate elected to a state legislature.
Minnesota
- For the last 27 years, every Lt. Governor in Minnesota has been a woman, starting with Marlene Johnson in 1983.
North Carolina
- When she was elected in 2017, Vi Lyles became the first Black woman mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city.
Oklahoma
- Oklahoma was the second state to elect a woman to Congress: Alice Robertson in 1921. Robertson was also the first woman to defeat an incumbent representative in a general election.
Tennessee
- Tennessee is 1 of just 6 states (MN, MS, NY, OH, and UT are the others) to have never had a major party woman gubernatorial candidate.
Texas
- Miriam “Ma” Ferguson of Texas was one of the first woman to be elected governor of a state. She and Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming were both elected governor in 1925.
Utah
- When she took office in 2015, Mia Love became the first black Republican woman elected to Congress.
Vermont
- Vermont is the only state that has never elected a woman to Congress.
Virginia
- When she was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, Danica Roem became the first openly transgender state legislator.