WASHINGTON – Maryland Sen.-elect Angela Alsobrooks will make history in January as one of just five Black women to ever serve in the United States Senate.
As she won her hotly contested Senate race Tuesday, fellow Democrat Lisa Blunt Rochester triumphed in her bid for the Senate next door in Delaware.
Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester will be the first tandem of Black women to serve simultaneously in the Senate’s over 200-year history. Despite the two Democrats’ wins, their party’s narrow majority in the Senate was ceded to the GOP.
In defeating her Republican opponent, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, by nearly 7%, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections at the time of publishing, Alsobrooks also will become the first Black senator in the Free State’s history.
“On one hand, it’s a sign of progress, but on the other hand, why has it taken so long?” Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of American University’s Women and Politics Institute, told Capital News Service. “It’s about time.”
Despite Black women dominating voter turnout and mobilization efforts for years and serving as the most reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party, their representation in the Senate does not accurately reflect their political importance, according to Fischer Martin.
At Alsobrooks’ Election Day watch party at The Hotel in College Park on Tuesday, those from the Prince George’s County executive’s home base were aware of the stakes.
“Hogan ran against her, we like Hogan, but we need the Senate for the Democrats,” campaign volunteer Judy Mickens-Murray of Upper Marlboro told CNS. “I think the state of Maryland, I think the constituents here, realize that.”
Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Illinois, who broke the glass ceiling for the soon-to-be neighboring senators, says they’ll have an opportunity to forge new ground with more freedom than she had. Moseley Braun has served as a mentor for Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester since they announced their campaigns.
“We can build on what we’ve done so far, that’ll make their path easier than mine was,” Moseley Braun told CNS. ”It’s a different generation, and I’m just so proud of these young women that they haven’t been intimidated or frightened off from the challenge and decided to take it up anyway.”
Moseley Braun arrived on Capitol Hill in 1993 for her first day as a senator when U.S. Capitol Police briefly prohibited her from entering the Senate chamber. She said one of the officers tried to stop her before a colleague – who was acquainted with the fact that Illinois had elected a Black woman to the Senate – educated his counterpart.
“I was overwhelmed by the whole experience,” Moseley Braun recalled of her first day. “But I was able to take the oath and just go forward as a senator.”
During her term she was later reprimanded for using a cane on the chamber floor after a knee injury, a violation of a former pre-Civil War era rule, and became the first to break the unspoken “pants barrier” for female senators.
Currently, Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-California, who was appointed after the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, is the lone Black woman serving in the chamber. Butler has served her entire term as a lame duck after announcing in October 2023 that she had no intentions of running for a full six-year term.
Kamala Harris previously served as a California senator before becoming vice president. She was only the second Black woman in the Senate’s history at the time. Harris, elected in 2016, appeared in Alsobrooks ads endorsing her mentee while tying the two campaigns together.
Butler endorsed Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester while also co-sponsoring a fundraiser this August in Chicago alongside Moseley Braun.
When on the campaign trail, Alsobrooks focused on how her identity would influence her policies.
“Every one of us in our country should be able to look in the Senate and see ourselves – of every race, of every gender and every background – because it makes our policies more complete,” Alsobrooks said at a rally at Bowie State University on Oct. 3. “In the United States of America, did you know that out of the 2006 senators we have elected in our country, we have elected Black women twice?”
Patrice Willoughby, chief of policy and legislative affairs for NAACP, told CNS that some people have a false impression that Black officials only address issues pertaining to Black constituencies. To combat that prejudice, she said candidates often won’t mention their identities in their campaign fundraising and messaging.
“You have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good,” Willoughby said. “So when there are Black female candidates, the overlay of gender and race is not something that you campaign on. It really does indicate a level of preparation for them having to surmount the historic barriers to being able to campaign in a competitive way.”
Alsobrooks, 53, defeated a foe who was well known in Maryland. Hogan, 68, won two gubernatorial elections in 2014 and 2018.
“The history can be celebrated, but the senators themselves will want the focus to be on their achievements and goals,” Fischer Martin said. “That is how the coverage should turn, focusing on their substantive agendas.”
Throughout her “Defend Our Majority Tour,” Alsobrooks took aim at Hogan’s efforts to depict himself as politically independent in a party dominated by Donald Trump. In her victory speech, Alsobrooks saluted those that came before her like Moseley Braun, Harris and Butler, while pledging her commitment to the Marylanders who “dream of a better day.”
“Maryland’s the kind of state that would welcome an opportunity to welcome her as their new senator,” Moseley Braun said. “She’s obviously got the capacity to do the job and the heart to do the job in a way that makes Marylanders proud.”
Fischer Martin recalled late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s famous quote while running for the U.S. Senate in 1992’s “the year of the woman,” when five women – including Moseley Braun – were elected to the chamber: “Two percent may be fine for fat in milk, but not for the United States Senate.”
“The same can be said for Black women in the Senate today,” Fischer Martin said. “Two is a start but not enough.”