While two white men are the center of the 2020 election, an outstanding number of women were running for seats in legislature. Each of them made history by being the first of the elected seats they’ve won and surely pass the baton to the aspiring women who want to be in the rooms where decisions are made.
Cori Bush
Bush won the election to represent Missouri in Congress, the first Black woman to achieve that elected seat. She is an avid Black Lives Matter activist, remembered to have lead the fight for justice for Mike Brown, a teenager who was killed in Ferguson. Bush is determined to change the tide of police brutality in her home state as well as better the treatment of those disenfranchised communities. She knows there are challenges ahead of her, but she also knows she will come out the other end as the champion.
Sarah McBride
McBride will become the nation’s first ever openly transgender state senator for Delaware. She is passionate about non-discrimination legislation and expanding health care coverage. She is also the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, responsible for collecting data on America’s transgender community. Her fight for equality can change the playing field for the LGBT community as well as provide them the proper safety and civil rights they deserve.
Mauree Turner
Turner will become the first Muslim legislator in Oklahoma and first nonbinary state legislator in the nation. Their campaign was based on their concern that many other citizens of Oklahoma lead lives as they did living off of federal aid in a single parent household and were not represented. However, they did represent a vast majority of the population being affected by government decisions. Turner settled their platform on criminal justice, raising working wages and also expanding affordable healthcare.
Marilyn Strickland
After winning the election to represent Washington in Congress, Strickland makes history being the first Black woman to be elected and first Korean-American woman elected to Congress. She is determined to raise minimum wage, increase health benefits due to COVID and work on combatting climate change. Strickland also fights for improving education, legal rights for LGBT citizens and amplifying the voices of vulnerable communities.
Teresa Leger Fernandez
Leger Fernandez rose as the first woman to be elected to New Mexico’s Congressional District 3. Being of Mexican descent, she fights for creating legal defenses for undocumented immigrants. She is also determined to keep affordable healthcare accessible as well as reproductive rights legal for women. Underlining her future policies with a fight for equality, diversity and equity are sewn tightly to her plans for the future.
Featured Image by Kendall Hoopes on Pexels
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