In the Senate, Democrats hope 2024 will be the tear of the Black woman

WASHINGTON — There was Carol Moseley Braun, the Illinois Democrat who in 1992 became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Nearly a quarter-century would pass before Kamala Harris became the second, in 2016. Seven more years would go by before the third Black woman was sworn in after Laphonza Butler was appointed.

None of them overlapped in the Senate, each serving as the sole Black woman in the overwhelmingly white and male 100-member chamber sometimes referred to as the world’s greatest deliberative body.

All that may be about to change in what Democrats are hoping to make the year of the Black woman in the Senate. With two Black women in strong positions to claim open Senate seats in blue states — and Harris now at the top of the ticket — they are preparing for what they regard as a long-overdue moment when their numbers could double, even if only to two.

“I’m so excited that we are about to move beyond the acceptance of having just one,” said Butler, D-Calif., speaking Friday at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference in downtown Washington. “We’re going to be bold enough to send two.”

Butler, who is not running for reelection, was seated next to Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., who is all but assured of winning the seat being vacated by Sen. Thomas R. Carper.

Next to them was Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive in Maryland, who holds a slight lead over Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor, in public polls. Alsobrooks emerged in May from a competitive primary to replace Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who is retiring.

“For the first time, there’s a potential to have not just one at a time but two — double the number!” said Blunt Rochester, a close ally of President Joe Biden’s who in 2020 helped run the vetting process to choose Harris as his running mate. She noted that she had started calling Alsobrooks her “sister senator-to-be.”

“To know that you’re going to be in a place and belong in a place with someone who has shared values and expectations and lived experiences,” Blunt Rochester said, was invaluable.

She added: “We even both have children named Alex.”

In the final sprint to Election Day, with control of the House, Senate, and White House teetering on narrow margins, the convention center ballroom Friday was a respite of calm in a breakneck and noxious election cycle that has for the first time elevated a Black woman to be her party’s nominee.

(Harris has rejected claims by former President Donald Trump that she “happened to turn Black” a few years ago and that after “promoting” her Indian heritage, “all of a sudden she made a turn and she went — she became a Black person.”)

Alsobrooks has a competitive contest against Hogan, but the race is still rated as “likely Democratic” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Blunt Rochester was careful not to sound like she was measuring the drapes. But she is running in a solidly Democratic state in a race that she is expected to win.

So on Friday, they stopped for an hour to marvel at their progress, including the rise of Harris to senator from California, vice president, and now the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris, notably, is not going out of her way to highlight her race or gender in her campaign.

Butler, a close friend of the vice president’s, called her “the consummate girlfriend.”

They joked that given the current political moment, it was long past time to move on from the high-minded rallying cry once heard from Michelle Obama, the former first lady who in 2016 counseled Democrats: “When they go low, we go high.”

“Since the former first lady made the initial call to us to be higher, we knew we were down in the gutter,” Butler said, laughing.

Alsobrooks recalled eating in the Senate dining area with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., when she noticed two women of color in uniform, one Black and one Latina, smiling at her from the corner.

“I got up and went over; they were so ecstatic,” she said. “They don’t see themselves in the Senate, and it is the case that your mere presence when you walk in a room — it changes the whole room.”

There have been 75 Black women who have run or are running for the Senate since 2010, according to data compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Only 10 of those have secured major party nominations, in part because they face headwinds in raising money and getting backing from the party apparatus. All have been Democrats.

“This is a reset moment,” said Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic political strategist. “This is a historic year.”

Brazile likened it to the so-called “year of the woman” in 1992, when a record four women won their first Senate seats, including Moseley Braun. It came after the Senate Judiciary Committee summoned Anita Hill to recount her sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and then dismissed her account.

“The country was in a foul mood, and they saw women as change agents,” Brazile said. The same thing is happening again now, she said, in reaction to the seemingly never-ending candidacy of Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault and made racist statements, including his charge about Harris’ identity.

“Voters are more comfortable with women in leadership positions across the board, and Black women are benefiting from that as well,” Brazile said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, said the potential watershed moment is the result of painstaking work to recruit and promote diverse candidates.

“We’ve been working hard to have the Senate look more like America,” Schumer said in a statement. “Having Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks in the U.S. Senate next Congress will mark a historic milestone and underscores the progress needed to ensure our government truly represents the diverse voices of all Americans.”

Schumer has also pressed to recruit other candidates from minority groups for Senate races this cycle, including Rep. Ruben Gallego in Arizona; Rep. Andy Kim in New Jersey; Rep. Collin Allred in Texas; and former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida.

On Friday, Blunt Rochester said that having more Black women in the Senate is crucial “when we are dealing with things like maternal mortality and the impact that it has on all of us, but in particular Black women who are dying at three times a greater rate.”

It matters, too, she continued, “when we’re talking about issues of student debt when we earn less on the dollar.”

“These issues are both professional, but they’re also personal,” she said.

Alsobrooks said she was eager to win her election so she could co-sponsor the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights into federal law, “to provide for our daughters the opportunity not to have fewer rights than their mothers and granddaughters.”

But a victory would also be an important piece of history, she said.

“The leg of the race that we are running is just that — it’s a leg of the race,” Alsobrooks said. “All the ancestors are celebrating right now.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.