All of them made history in the midterm elections on Tuesday, October 8, emerging victorious from a contest that was in many ways more diverse than in previous years – with more women nominated for governors and state legislatures, more Black candidates nominated for the Senate, and more L.G.B.T.Q. nominees for the House.
The results of the elections have not yet been finalized, with some regions of the country still counting votes, but here’s who has made history so far.
• Maura Healey, the new Democratic governor of Massachusetts, is the first openly lesbian governor elected in any state. Voters previously elected a gay man as governor (Jared Polis of Colorado, who was re-elected on Tuesday) and a bisexual woman (Kate Brown of Oregon), both Democrats.
• Before Tuesday, no state had chosen women to serve as governor and lieutenant governor at the same time. Now, two states have done so: Arkansas, which elected two Republicans, Sarah Huckabee Sanders as governor and Leslie Rutledge as lieutenant governor; and Massachusetts, which elected two Democrats, Healey and Kim Driscoll. (Huckabee Sanders is also the first woman elected governor of Arkansas.)
• Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat who won in Florida’s 10th Congressional District, will be the first member of Congress from Generation Z, whose older members were born in 1997. (Another Generation Z member, Republican Karoline Leavitt, lost her race in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District.)
• Robert Garcia, a Democrat who won a seat in the House in California’s 42nd District, is the first openly gay immigrant elected to Congress. Garcia’s family immigrated to the United States from Peru when he was a child, and he was undocumented before obtaining citizenship as a young adult.
• Wes Moore, a Democrat, is the first Black governor of Maryland and only the third Black governor elected since Reconstruction.
• Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, is the first woman elected governor of New York. She has held the position since last year, when she took office following the resignation of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.