[W]ASHINGTON — When Congress returns to Washington, D.C. in April following a scheduled two-week recess, Mississippi will have a new United States senator.
Mississippi Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith’s appointment by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant Wednesday to succeed longtime senator Thad Cochran leaves Vermont with a new distinction: it is the only state in the country that has not been represented by a woman in Congress.
Ruth Hardy of Emerge Vermont, a group that trains Democratic women to run for office, said the state’s failure to send a woman to Congress runs counter to the state’s reputation for implementing progressive policies, such as legalizing same-sex marriage.
“We consider ourselves very progressive, and we have a tradition of equality in Vermont,” Hardy said.
“We’ve lagged behind at … the state-level leadership for women,” she said.
Hardy said the lack of female representation of Vermont in Washington could in part be a result of a structural challenge. With its single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Vermont has only a three-member congressional delegation.
Vermont voters also tend to favor incumbents, and the state’s representatives in Congress have tended to hold office for a long time, she said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who was first elected in 1974, is the longest-serving member of the Senate.
“There’s a lot to be said for seniority, but there’s as much if not more to be said for diversity of representation,” Hardy said.
In addition to never sending a woman to Congress, Vermont has only elected one woman to the state’s top job. Gov. Madeleine Kunin served on the Fifth Floor from 1985 to 1991.
Women, however, are well represented in the Vermont Legislature.
Vermont is currently tied with Arizona for having the highest percentage of female state legislators in the country, according to a 2018 tally from the National Conference of State Legislatures. In both states, women comprise 40 percent of state lawmakers.
Nationally, women represent 25.4 percent of all state legislators, according to the report.
Hardy said women hold numerous high-ranking positions in the Statehouse, including the House speaker, the Senate majority leader, and many committee chairs.
However, according to Hardy, women hold a smaller percentage of local offices. In 2017, 21 percent of people elected to local boards were women, she said.
Though Hardy heads a partisan organization, she said she is happy to see more women in office across the political spectrum.
As of 2018, 19.6 percent of members of Congress are female.
Elected bodies can’t effectively represent the population when they don’t reflect the diversity of the country, Hardy said.
