Politics & Government

America elected 11 firsts to govern, but not the first female president

By Kate Irby

kirby@mcclatchy.com

November 09, 2016 11:46 AM

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown speaks to the crowd of supporters after being elected at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday. Steve Dykes AP

Hillary Clinton did not break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” and become the first female president of the United States Tuesday night, but she wasn’t the only one who was ready to break barriers.

All but one of those “firsts” were Democrats. Here’s a list of those 11 firsts:

1) Kate Brown became the first openly bisexual person to be elected governor of a U.S. state. She was the incumbent in Oregon, though this was her first time running to election to the position. The former governor resigned and Brown was the secretary of state, which is next in line in Oregon because there is no lieutenant governor.

Brown told students during a graduation speech that she feared she would be fired from her job as a lawyer in the 1980s if her colleagues discovered she was dating a woman. She was outed in the 1990s and has been married to her husband since 1997.

2) Catherine Cortez Masto became the first female Latina U.S. senator. She was elected in Nevada, to the seat of Sen. Harry Reid, the outgoing Democratic minority leader. She is also the first female senator to represent Nevada.

Cortez Masto is the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and campaigned against Donald Trump’s proposed border wall. Her opponent, Joe Heck, stumbled in his campaign when he grappled with his support of Trump, according to the New York Times.

Clinton won in Nevada.

November 9, 2016
">

3) Kamala Harris became the first biracial woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She was elected in California, where the Associated Press called her win minutes after the polls closed. She is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica.

She tweeted early Wednesday that she intends to fight for who America is and “against those naysayers who say there is no such thing as climate change.”

November 9, 2016
">

4) Adriano Espaillat became the first Dominican-American elected to Congress. Espaillat was elected in New York and was born in the Dominican Republic.

He came to the U.S. on a tourist visa and stayed illegally, meaning he is also the first Congressman to formerly be an undocumented immigrant.

5) Pramila Jayapal became the first Indian-American woman elected to Congress. She was elected in Washington and said she would be a “light in the darkness” if Trump won the presidency.

“If our worst fears are realized, we will be on the defense as of tomorrow,” she told supporters after she won the seat. “We will have to fight for social justice as never before.”

6) Stephanie Murphy became the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress. Elected in Florida, she pulled off an upset against the incumbent.

“When I entered this race, very few people thought we could win,” Murphy said after her win, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “We had a huge challenge ahead of us ... We didn’t want to just make a difference. We wanted to make a point. That point is that this county is not going to tolerate dysfunction and deadlock... That every child should have a fair shot at the American dream.”

7) Lisa Blunt Rochester became the first woman and African-American to represent Delaware in Congress. One out of five voters in Delaware are black.

Blunt Rochester told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she decided to run after the sudden death of her husband two years ago. She used his life insurance money to help fund her campaign.

November 9, 2016