By: Miriam Edelman
The 2024 Presidential, Congressional, and Gubernatorial elections continue to make history in race/ethnicity, gender, religion, LGBTQ, criminal record, and other ways. The U.S. Senate is poised to be the most racially diverse ever with record numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics.
President
President and President-Elect Donald J. Trump has made history in multiple ways. He is the first convicted felon to be elected President, the first person to be elected President after being impeached as President, and the first person to be elected President after causing a non-peaceful transfer of power. At 78 years old, Trump is the oldest person elected to the presidency. A former New Yorker, Trump is Florida’s first-ever President.
Trump is the President with the largest number of the following electoral vote-popular vote combinations – win electoral vote/win popular vote, win electoral vote/lose popular vote, lose electoral vote/win popular vote, and lose electoral vote/lose popular vote. He has three of them. In 2016, he won the electoral vote, not the popular vote. In 2020, he lost both. In 2024, he won both. According to The Washington Post, he won a larger percent of the vote in all states and the District of Columbia in 2024 than in 2020. With each successive election (2016, 2020, and 2024), Trump received more total popular votes and a greater percent of the popular vote. However, he has never won a majority of the popular vote.
For the first time in decades, the President and VP will have been Ivy League graduates. Trump and Vance is the first Republican ticket consisting of two Ivy League graduates to be elected. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (college), and Vance graduated from Yale Law School. The last President-VP duo who were both Ivy League graduates were Bill Clinton (President) and Al Gore (VP). Clinton graduated from Yale Law School, and Gore graduated from Harvard College. W. Bush’s VP Dick Cheney, who replaced Gore as VP, does not count because he dropped out of Yale University (college). The last Republican President-VP duo were Gerald Ford-Nelson Rockefeller. Ford graduated from Yale Law School, and Rockefeller graduated from Dartmouth College. However, neither Ford nor Rockefeller won election to those top two government positions. In fact, Ford was the only President to never have been elected President or VP.
At 40 years old, Vice President-Elect JD Vance will be the U.S.’s first millennial President or VP. He will be the U.S.’s third-youngest VP. The youngest two are Vice President Jock Breckinridge (who was 36 when he became James Buchanan’s VP) and Richard Nixon (who was 40 years old when he became Dwight D. Eisenhower’s VP). Vance will be the first VP who is a Marine veteran. He will be the first VP with facial hair since Charles Curtis, who was Herbert Hoover’s VP.
JD Vance’s wife Usha will be the nation’s first Indian-America First or Second Lady and the nation’s first Asian-American First or Second Lady. She will also be the nation’s first Hindu First or Second Lady. At 38 years old, she will be the U.S.’s youngest Second Lady since Jane Hadley Barkley, VP Alben Barkley’s wife, in 1949.
Congress
There will be a record 67 African-American Members of Congress in 2025. 62 will be Democrats, and five are Republicans.
African-Americans Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) were just elected to the U.S. Senate and will begin their Senate tenures in January 2024. The election of both doubled the number of African-American females elected to the Senate in U.S. history. Prior to 2024, just two African-American females had been elected to the Senate [Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) (1993-1999) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) (2017-2021)]. As a result of the 2024 elections, in 2025, for the first time in U.S. history, there will be more than one African-American female Senator at once. Blunt Rochester will be Delaware’s first female Senator. Blunt and Alsobrooks will each be their respective state’s first African-American Senator. Alsobrooks also became the first African-American woman to be elected statewide in Maryland.
The elections of Blunt Rochester and Alsobrooks will also yield a new record number of African-American Senators serving at the same time – five. The African-American Senators will be Alsobrooks, Blunt Rochester, Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tim Scott (R-SC), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA).
Andy Kim (D-NJ) also will make history. He will be the U.S.’s first Korean-American Senator. He will also be the first Asian-American Senator who does not represent California, Hawaii, and Illinois.
History was also made regarding Hispanics and the U.S. Senate. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) will be Ohio’s first Hispanic and first Person of Color Senator. He will be also Ohio’s first Hispanic official statewide. He will also be the U.S.’s first Colombian-born Senator. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) will be Arizona’s first Hispanic Senator.
As a result of the elections of Moreno and Gallego, there will be a record number of Hispanic Senators serving at the same time – seven. They are Moreno, Gallego, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL). However, if Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Rubio becomes the next U.S. Secretary of State, Rubio very well could not leave the Senate before Moreno and Gallego take office. Thus, the new record could still happen.
In 2025, there will be the most racially/ethnically diverse Senate in history, with 16 racial-/ethnic- minority Senators. That number includes five African-Americans, seven Hispanics, three Asian-Americans [Kim, Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI)], and one Native American [Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) – Cherokee].
Senator Adam Schiff, who was sworn into the Senate on December 10th, is California’s first Caucasian male Senator since Alan Cranston in 1993. In addition, California, which was the first state to have all-female Senate delegation, now has zero female Senators for the first time since 1992.
Representatives-Elect made history in terms of race/ethnicity. Janelle Bynum will be Oregon’s first African-American Member of Congress. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) will be Arizona’s first Iranian-American Member of Congress. Suhas Sybramanyam (D-VA) is the first Indian-American elected to Congress by Virginia. Nellie Pou (D-NJ) is the first Latina elected to Congress from New Jersey. Derek Tran (D-CA) is the first Vietnamese-American elected to either the Senate or the House from California. He will be the first Vietnamese-American to represent the district of Little Saigon, which is the largest Vietnamese-descent population not in Vietnam. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) is the first Ukrainian-born Member of Congress of Virginia.
Multiple Representatives-elect made history in terms of LGBTQ. Sarah McBride (D-DE) became the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress. Julie Johnson (D-TX) was the first out LGBTQ federal election winner in Texas. She is also the South’s first elected openly LGBTQ person. Emily Randall (D-WA) is the U.S.’s first out LBGTQ Hispanic woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She also is the first out LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Washington State.
Julie Federochak (R-ND) will be North Dakota’s first female Representative. Thus, Mississippi now is the only state to not have elected a female to the House of Representatives.
In 2025, Jean Shaheen will make history as the first female to lead a party in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since Republicans gained the majority of the Senate in the 2024 elections, Shaheen will be that committee’s Ranking Member.
Governors
History was also made in gubernatorial elections. In 2025, there will be a record 13 female Governors serving at the same time. The current record is 12
Individual Governors-elect made history. Josh Stein (D-NC) will be North Carolina’s first Jewish Governor. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) became the first Republican female to be elected Governor. Ayotte is just the third woman to have been elected Governor and Senator and the first one to be elected Senator and then Governor. The other two women, New Hampshire’s Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, were elected Governor and then Senator. In November 2016, then-Governor Hassan defeated then-Senator Ayotte to be Senator.
Closing Thoughts
More history might be made. Congressional committees leaders have not been completely set.
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