Angela Alsobrooks, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester Achieve Historic Firsts Winning U.S. Senate Seats

Source: Tom Williams / Getty

Angelo Alsobrooks and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester achieved historic firsts on Election Day with the pair becoming the first women and first Black women in their respective seats to win U.S. Senate seats. This would mark the first time that two Black women are serving in the Senate chamber at the same time.

Angela Alsobrooks, currently the County Executive for Prince George’s County in Maryland, faced former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan in a race that most expected Alsobrooks to win in the heavily blue-leaning state. Hogan spent plenty in Maryland to flip Sen. Ben Cardin’s open seat but Alsobrooks ran a sharp campaign and banked on her strong record as a known elected official in one of the larger counties.

Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a congresswoman representing Delaware’s at-large district in the state, has been in politics since the 1990s. She served as deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services in 1993 and secretary of the Department of Labor in 1998 under the exiting Delaware Sen. Tom Carper during his time as governor of the state.

Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester will bring the number of Black senators in the chamber to six. They are also just the fourth and fifth Black women to be elected to the Senate.

The pair follow a great path that was first laid by Sen. Carol Mosley Braun, who was the first Black woman elected to the Senate in 1992. Vice President Kamala Harris was elected to the Senate in 2016. Sen Laphonza Butler, who will vacate the seat at the end of her current term, was appointed to the seat to serve out the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term which ends this coming January.

The excitement of the news of Senator-Elect Angela Alsobrooks and Senator-Elect Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester is spreading. We’ve got reactions from X below.

Thank you, Maryland! pic.twitter.com/fUl9HGdmaU

— Angela Alsobrooks (@AlsobrooksForMD) November 6, 2024

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From the bottom of my heart, Delaware, thank you pic.twitter.com/UI9GtzqYBJ

— Lisa Blunt Rochester (@LisaBRochester) November 6, 2024

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Photo: Getty