This commentary is by Howard Fairman of Putney, a Vermonter and independent voter who does not personally know any former, current or potential member of Congress.
A century since Vermont women were first allowed to vote (19th Amendment, 1920), “Vermont has never sent a woman to Congress” is loosely stated.8
Four states have never elected a woman to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Nineteen states have never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate. It is much harder for women to become U.S. Senators.
Only Vermont has never done either.
Now is time for Vermonters to nominate and elect a woman U.S. Representative and a woman U.S. senator.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ immediate endorsement of U.S. Rep. Peter Welch to succeed retiring most-senior U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy signaled Vermonters to ratify yet another elder white man said to have served his terms and earned his transfer (who can never earn significant senatorial seniority).
Sen. Leahy didn’t: Chittenden County state’s attorney to U.S. senator from Vermont, age 34, as the only Democrat since the Republican Party was founded in 1854.
A woman needn’t: Outstanding Vermont track record to U.S. senator from Vermont as the first woman since Vermont joined the United States of America in 1791.
Since the first U.S. Congress (1789), 11,107 people have been U.S. representatives: 10,758 men (96.9 percent); 349 women (3.1 percent, since 1917).
Some 680 U.S. representatives have become U.S. senators: 663 among 10,758 men (6.2 percent); 17 among 349 women (4.9 percent, since 1949); much harder for women.
Since 1789, 1,994 people have been U.S. senators: 1,936 men (97.1 percent); 58 women (2.9 percent, since 1922).
Our northern New England neighbors each have elected three women U.S. senators: Republicans Susan Collins, Margaret Chase Smith and Olympia Snowe from Maine; Democrats Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire. Four of them had never served as U.S. representatives.
Only Californians have also elected three women U.S. senators, two of whom had never served as U.S. representatives. (Nine states have elected two women U.S. senators; 19 have elected one.)
Two women U.S. senators now represent Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Washington, as they have Arizona, California (twice), Kansas, Maine and New Hampshire (once before).
That a woman aspiring to be a U.S. senator from Vermont still must begin elsewhere, then await her turn, is male privilege whose time is past. Let’s nominate and elect her in 2022.
If necessary, grassroots Vermonters can nominate her ourselves:
“The name of any person shall be printed upon the primary ballot as a candidate for nomination by any major political party for the office indicated, if a petition containing the requisite number of signatures made by registered voters, in substantially the following form, is filed with the proper official, together with the person’s written consent to having his or her name printed on the ballot” (17 V.S.A. § 2353(a)).
And let’s nominate and elect a woman U.S. representative from Vermont, who may succeed Sen. Sanders when he retires.
- Footnote: During my detailed research via the Congressional Office of the House Historian and Senate Historical Office, I learned that the second and seventh women U.S. senators — first elected Sen. Hattie Wyatt Caraway (1931-45) from Arkansas and first former U.S. representative (1940-49), and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (1949-73) from Maine — were pioneering widows who reinvented their late husbands’ congressional careers while defying men’s presumptions that they would not.
