Will Vermont be the 50th to Send a Woman to Congress?

By Julie Mackaman

It’s been a journey of over 100 years, from the ratification of the 19th Amendment that gave women in the U.S. the right to vote, to the current record-breaking number of 145 women serving in the U.S. Congress (121 in the House, 24 in the Senate), with a woman serving as Speaker of the House. Vermont alone has never sent a woman to Congress, either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

Say what? Vermonters have never sent a woman to Congress?

That’s right. Women have been elected to the House of Representatives from 46 of the 50 states, the four outliers being Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota and Vermont. But Alaska, Mississippi and North Dakota have sent women to the U.S. Senate.

Why not?

Elaine Haney is executive director of Emerge Vermont, a local chapter of a nationwide program that trains women who are running for office. She says that Vermont has yet to send a woman to Washington because Vermont’s small population — we have only one Representative in the House — means that few seats regularly open up. (A shell game case in point: Vermont hasn’t had open seats since 2006, when Jim Jeffords (I-VT) announced his retirement after 18 years in the U.S. Senate, creating an opening for Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to win Jeffords’ Senate seat and Peter Welch (D-VT) to move from the Vermont Senate into Sanders’ place in the House.) Moreover, women more often than men have family responsibilities that prevent them from running a successful campaign. 

Are the times a-changing?

Yes. Today, some 2,260 women make up nearly 31% of state legislatures nationwide, with the Green Mountain State’s 77 female legislators representing nearly 43% of the legislative body. (Hats off to Arizona, Maine, New Mexico and Rhode Island, with percentages even higher than Vermont’s, and especially to Nevada and Guam whose legislatures are over 50% women.)

What’s more, Vermont women currently hold top leadership positions in the state’s legislature. Two of them, Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray and the Senate’s President Pro Tem Becca Balint, will be joined by State Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale and Sianay Chase Clifford in a run for the U.S. House seat that Peter Welch — who is mounting a campaign to succeed Patrick Leahy in the U.S. Senate — will be leaving when his term ends in January 2023.

It’s beginning to feel like a historical moment. Our AAUW branch dedicated a year of programming to the centennial of Women’s Suffrage in 2019-20, and now we face the prospect of watching Vermont become the 50th state to send a woman to the U.S. Congress Let’s hear from the four women who have announced their candidacy for the House what it’s like to be part of this moment.