Women Guaranteed a Voice in the Senate: A Series of Lists

Hawaii, Class III
Elizabeth P. Farrington (R): 1959-1975 [1]
Patsy Mink (D): 1975-1999 [2]
Pat Saiki (R): 1999-2005 [3]
Colleen Hanabusa (D): 2005-2011
Maile Shimabukuro (D): 2011-2017 [4]

Beth Fukumoto (R): 2017-present [5]


[1] Elizabeth Farrington was a president of the League of Republican Women, president of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and House Delegate for the Territory of Hawaii from 1954 to 1957.
[2] Patsy Mink was a Congresswoman from Hawaii serving the at-large district from 1965 to 1971, and the 2nd district from 1971 to 1977 and from 1990 to her death in 2002. Mink was the first Asian-American and first nonwhite woman to serve in Congress and was the first Asian-American to seek the presidency when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972 in the Oregon primary.
[3] Pat Saiki represented Hawaii's 1st district from 1987 to 1991 and was head of George H. W. Bush's Small Business Administration from 1991 to 1993. Saiki also ran for Senate in the 1990 special election, losing to appointed incumbent Daniel Akaka but receiving 44% of the vote.
[4] Maile Shimabukuro is state senator for the 21st district, serving since 2011.
[5] Beth Fukumoto is state representative for Hawaii's 43rd district. She was Minority Leader of the Hawaii State House from 2013 to 2017, when she was voted out as minority leader and left the Republican Party shortly after.
 
Idaho, Class III
Harriet F. Noble (D): 1927-1930* [1]
S. Belle Chamberlain (R): 1930-1939 [2]
Lela D. Painter (R): 1939-1945 [3]

Myrtle Enking (D): 1945-1957 [4]
Gracie Pfost (D): 1957-1965* [5]
Marjorie Ruth Moon (D): 1965-1981 [6]

Helen Chenoweth-Hage (R): 1981-2005 [7]
Jana Kemp (R
, I after 2015): 2005-2015, 2015 to 2017 [8]
Judy Boyle (R): 2017-present [9]


[1] Hattie Noble was Engrossment Clerk for the Idaho legislature beginning in 1875, a clerical position, and then was elected to the State House in 1898.
[2] S. Belle Chamberlain was Idaho's State Superintendent of Instruction from 1907 to 1911.
[3] Lela Painter was a teacher and assistant cashier who rose through Idaho politics as treasurer at various levels, up to serving as Idaho State Treasurer from 1947 to 1952.
[4] Myrtle Enking was... also Idaho State Treasurer. But earlier, from 1933 to 1944. She was Idaho's first in a long line of women state treasurers. Yeah, expect a few of them here. Women held the office of state treasurer for a period from 1933 to 1998 broken only by Rulon Swenson, who was treasurer from 1959 to 1962 between the death of Ruth G. Moon and Marjorie Ruth Moon (who was, incidentally, Ruth's daughter).
[5] Gracie Pfost was not Idaho State Treasurer. Pfost was, however, Idaho's first woman in Congress, representing the 1st district from 1953 to 1963. Pfost ran for Senate in 1962 and lost by less than 2 percent to former governor Len Jordan.
[6] Marjorie Ruth Moon was a prominent Idaho newspaper publisher, and you guessed it, State Treasurer. Moon served as Treasurer for over two decades from 1963 to 1986, only giving up her position to run for lieutenant governor in 1986. While fellow Democratic governor Cecil Andrus retained his seat by less than 4,000 votes, Moon lost to Butch Otter by 2,700.
[7] Helen Chenoweth-Hage represented Idaho's 1st Congressional district from 1995 to 2001. Elected during the 1994 Republican Revolution, Chenoweth-Hage was one of the most conservative members of the House at the time.
[8] Jana Kemp was an Idaho state representative who ran for governor as an independent in 2010, getting nearly 6 percent of the vote.
[9] Judy Boyle is an Idaho state representative. She was Helen Chenoweth-Hage's natural resources director and is currently vice chair of the state house agricultural affairs committee.
 
Illinois, Class III
Ruth McCormick (R): 1927-1945 [1]
Jessie Sumner (R): 1945-1951 [2]

Emily Taft Douglas (D): 1951-1969 [3]
Muriel Tuteur (D): 1969-1981 [4]
Cardiss Collins (D): 1981-1987 [5]

Lynn Morley Martin (R): 1987-1993 [6]
Carol Moseley Braun (D): 1993-1999 [7]
Judy Koehler (R): 1999-2005 [8]
Carol Moseley Braun (D): 2005-2017
Tammy Duckworth (D): 2017-present [9]


[1] Ruth McCormick was the daughter of Mark Hanna, chair of the first woman's executive committee of the Republican National Committee, Illinois at-large Representative from 1929 to 1931, wife of Senator Joseph M. McCormick of the McCormick family, and Republican nominee for Senate in 1930 where she lost to Democrat James Hamilton Lewis.
[2] Jessie Sumner was the Representative from Illinois's 18th district from 1939 to 1947. She was a vocal critic of FDR's policies, and a staunch isolationist who among other things, voted against easing the arms embargo of the Neutrality Act, against American declaration of war on Germany and against the joining of the United Nations.
[3] Emily Taft Douglas was the first Democratic woman elected to the House from Illinois, serving the at-large district from 1945 to 1947 and making Illinois the second state after California to elected woman from both parties to Congress. She was also the wife of Senator Paul Douglas, and a distant relative of the Tafts. Douglas was an internationalist who supported the founding of the UN and the banning of nuclear weapons, and was appointed US representative to UNESCO in 1950.
[4] Muriel Tuteur was a decades long labor and union activist. She directed the first union-sponsored day care program for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textiles Workers Union and was founding member of the Chicago chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, serving as its president from 1978 to 1982.
[5] Cardiss Collins was the Representative from Illinois's 7th district from 1973 to 1997. She was elected to fill the seat's vacancy following the death of her husband George Collins, and was the first African-American woman elected to Congress from the Midwest.
[6] Lynn Morley Martin was the Representative for Illinois's 16th district from 1981 to 1991 during which she also was Vice Chair of the Republican National Committee from 1985 to 1989. Morley-Martin was considered as a potential running mate for George H. W. Bush in 1988, and eventually served as Bush Sr.'s Secretary of Labor from 1991 to 1993.
[7] Carol Moseley Braun was a Representative from 1979 to 1988, Senator from 1993 to 1999, and Ambassador to New Zealand from 1999 to 2001. She was the first African-American woman in the Senate, the first African-American Democratic Senator, the first woman to defeat an incumbent Senator (defeating Senator Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary in 1992), and also briefly ran for president in 2004.
[8] Judy Koehler was a state representative from 1981 to 1987 and was the Republican nominee for US Senate in 1986 against Democrat incumbent Alan Dixon. She also ran in the Republican primary for Illinois's 18th district in 1994, where she came in second to eventual winner Ray LaHood.
[9] Tammy Duckworth is a current Senator since 2017, the first disabled woman elected to Congress and the second Asian American woman to serve in the Senate. Recently she also became the first Senator to give birth while in office.
 
Indiana, Class III
Virginia Jenckes (D): 1927-1963 [1]
Cecil Harden (R): 1963-1975 [2]
Mary Jancosek Bercik (D): 1975-1987 [3]
Virginia Dill McCarty (D): 1987-1999 [4]

Becky Skillman (R): 1999-2005 [5]
Julia Carson (D): 2005-2017 [6]
Jackie Walorski (R): 2017-present

[1] Virginia Jenckes represented Indiana's 6th congressional district from 1933 to 1939, and was the first woman appointed US delegate to the Interparliamentary Union in 1937. She was also a fervent anticommunist.
[2] Cecil Harden represented Indiana's 6th congressional district from 1949 to 1959. She was also a Republican National Committeewoman from 1944 to 1959 and 1967 to 1972, and delegate to the Republican conventions in 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1968.
[3] Mary Bercik was appointed mayor of Whiting, Indiana in 1957 following the death of her husband mayor William Bercik. On assuming office, Mary Bercik became the first woman mayor in Indiana. During her time in office, she worked on modernizing the town including efforts in paving the roads and installing water meters, and in dealing with the aftermath of an explosion at the Standard Oil plant in the own.
[4] Virginia Dill McCarty was a prominent attorney who rose to become the first woman Assistant Indiana Attorney General, and the first woman appointed to a full term as US district attorney when Carter named her District Attorney for Indiana's southern district. She also nominated by the Democrats in the election for Indiana Attorney General in 1976, and became the first woman to run for governor in 1984, though she lost the Democratic primary.
[5] Beck Skillman served in the Indiana state senate from 1992 to 2004 and was Mitch Daniels' lieutenant governor from 2005 to 2013.
[6] Julia Carson was a longtime officeholder in Indiana as a member of the Indiana state house from 1973 to 1977, the state senate from 1977 to 1991, and in Congress from 1997 to 2007. She was the second African-American woman to represent Indiana in Congress (after Katie Hall). In OTL Carson died in 2007 of lung cancer, and was succeeded in the House by her grandson Andre Carson.
 
So... I kind of forgot about this for a while. But it's back!

Iowa, Class III
Lou Henry Hoover (R): 1927-1933 [1]
Carolyn Pendray (D): 1933-1939 [2]
Carrie Chapman Catt (I): 1939-1947 [3]
Ruth Buxton Sayre (R): 1947-1969 [4]
Edna Griffin (D): 1969-1975 [5]
Mary Louise Smith (R): 1975-1987 [6]
Jean Hall Lloyd-Jones (D): 1987-1999 [7]
Bonnie Campbell (D): 1999-2011 [8]

Mary Lundby (R): 2011-2017 [9]
Patty Judge (D): 2017-present [10]


[1] Lou Henry Hoover was the wife of President Herbert Hoover, and involved in many of her husband's activities. She traveled extensively with Herbert's mining activities including living in China together where she learned Mandarin, becoming the only First Lady to speak an Asian language. Lou Henry Hoover was also involved in the American Women's War Relief Fund during WWI, and with her knowledge of Latin and education in geology and engineering like her husband, collaborated with Herbert on translating Agricola's De Re Metallica into English.
[2] Carolyn Pendray was the first woman elected to the Iowa General Assembly, serving two terms and supporting education and women's rights reform bills in both the General Assembly and the State Senate.
[3] Carrie Chapman Catt was one of the nation's foremost leaders in the women's suffrage movement. She was a president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. Chapman Catt was one of the main campaigners for NAWSA in convincing Tennessee to become the last state to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1920.
[4] Ruth Sayre was president of the Associated Country Women of the World and was part of Eisenhower's Agricultural Advisory Committee. She was active in farm and rural issues throughout her activist career.
[5] Edna Griffin was a black civil rights activist in Iowa. After being denied service at a lunch counter in Des Moines in 1948, Griffin launched a campaign to end Jim Crow laws in Iowa, resulting in the early civil rights court victory in the case State of Iowa v. Katz. Griffin was also active in the 1948 Progressive Party and Henry Wallace's presidential campaign, and kept up her civil rights activism for much of her life.
[6] Mary Louise Smith was a Republican Party organizer and chairwoman of the Republican National Committee from 1974 to 1977. Smith actively campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment and for Planned Parenthood in Iowa. Smith was also vice chair of the US Civil Rights Commission from 1981 to 1984 during Reagan's first term.
[7] Jean Hall Lloyd-Jones was in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1979 to 1987 and the Iowa State Senate from 1987 to 1995.
[8] Bonnie Campbell was Iowa's Attorney General from 1991 to 1995, the Democratic nominee for governor in 1994, and was the first director of the national Office on Violence Against Women. Campbell was nominated in 2000 for the Eighth Circuit Court, but the Republican controlled Judiciary Committee declined to vote on her confirmation until the end of Clinton's term and her nomination was returned when President Bush entered office.
[9] Mary Lundby served on Iowa's House of Representatives from 1987 to 1995 and Iowa's State Senate from 1995 to 2009. In OTL, Lundby died in January 2009 of cervical cancer.
[10] Patty Judge was Iowa's Secretary of Agriculture from 1999 to 2007 and Lieutenant Governor from 2007 to 2011. In 2016, Judge was the Democratic nominee against Senator Chuck Grassley, but lost the election. Judge won just over 35% of the vote against Grassley, the best any Democrat had received against Senator Grassley except his initial election in 1980.
 
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