Women Guaranteed a Voice in the Senate: A Series of Lists

wilcoxchar

"When the women of the country come in and sit with you, though there may be but very few in the next few years, I pledge you that you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness." - Rebecca Latimer Fenton, 1922

So this is a project I've been working on for a while, and I'm far enough in to have a good buffer. And since today is International Women's Day, I decided what better day to start sharing it!

The premise of the lists is that either along with or shortly after the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, the Senate is also reformed so that there is guaranteed parity between men and women in the Senate, with men and women being guaranteed one Senate seat in each state. It's decided that women get all Class III seats and those Class II seats in states where there is a Class I and Class II Senate seat. This means the first elections where this is implemented are the 1924 Senate elections.

This is a lot more of a thought experiment than an actual timeline, but for many states finding enough women involved in politics to make a full list up to the present has actually been kind of hard.

I'm going through alphabetically.

Alabama, Class II

Dixie Graves (D): 1925-1931 [1]
Annie Daugette (D): 1931-1943 [2]
Dixie Graves (D): 1943-1955
Annie Lola Price (D): 1955-1961 [3]
Lurleen Wallace (D): 1961-1967
Elizabeth Andrews (D): 1967-1973 [4]
Maryon Pittman Allen (D): 1973-1985
Cornelia Wallace (D): 1985-1997
Terri Sewell (D): 1997-2003 [5]
Alice Martin (R): 2003-2015 [6]
Beth Chapman (R): 2015-present [7]

[1] Wife of governor Bibb Graves, in OTL she served as Alabama's first female Senator for five months after being appointed to serve out the remainder of Hugo Black's term in 1937.
[2] Daugette was president of the Daughters of the American Confederacy from 1937 to 1939.
[3] Annie Lola Price was the first woman to serve on an appellate court in Alabama.
[4] Elizabeth Andrews was the first woman to serve in Congress from Alabama. She was heavily active in her husband George Andrews' first Congressional campaign in 1944, and was appointed to serve out the rest of his term in 1972 following his death.
[5] ITTL Sewell is Alabama's first and so far only black Senator.
[6] Alice Martin is the current Deputy Attorney General of Alabama.
[7] Beth Chapman was Alabama's state auditor from 2003 to 2007 and Secretary of State from 2007 to 2013.

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Alaska, Class II
Mary Louise Rasmuson (R): 1959-1967 [1]
Helen Fischer (D): 1967-1979 [2]
Grace Berg Schaible (D): 1979-1985 [3]
Arliss Sturgulewski (R): 1985-2009 [4]
Lisa Murkowski (R): 2009-2015
Lesil McGuire (R): 2015-present [5]

[1] Mary Louise Milligan Rasmuson was the director of the Women's Army Corps from 1957 to 1962.
[2] Helen Fischer served in the Alaska territorial House and the state House from 1957-1961 and 1971-1975.
[3] Grace Berg Schaible, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, served as attorney general of Alaska from 1987 to 1989 and was the first woman to chair the Alaska Permanent Fund.
[4] Arliss Sturgulewski served in the state senate from 1979 to 1993 and was the Republican nominee for governor in 1986 and 1990. During her gubernatorial runs she was heavily attacked by conservatives for her pro-abortion stance.
[5] Lesli McGuire served in the Alaska state house from 2001 to 2007, and in the state senate from 2007 to 2017.
 

wilcoxchar

Arizona, Class III
Frances Willard Munds (D): 1927-1945 [1]
Rachel Emma Berry (D): 1945-1946* (1944) [2]
Mary Alice Patterson (D): 1946-1951 [3]
Clara Osborne Botzum (D): 1951-1963 [4]
Rose Mofford (D): 1963-1975 [5]
Annie Dodge Wauneka (D): 1975-1981 [6]
Sandra Day O'Connor (R): 1981-1993 [7]
Harriet C. Babbitt (D): 1993-2011 [8]
Jan Brewer (R): 2011-2017
Kirsten Synema (D): 2017-present

[1] Frances Munds was a longtime leader of the suffragist movement in Arizona, and even served in the Arizona state senate from 1915-1917, one of the few women to hold a state level office before the passage of the 19th Amendment.
[2] Rachel Berry also served in the pre-19th Amendment Arizona state legislature, as a member of the House in the first session of the state legislature when Arizona gained statehood in 1912. Berry, who moved to Phoenix from Utah in 1859 as a Mormon settler, was also supposedly one of the designers of the current Arizona state flag. She died in OTL in 1948, but ITTL dies in 1946.
[3] Mary Alice Patterson was Rachael Berry's daughter, one of the few instances in TTL where a daughter succeeds her mother as Senator. Patterson is one of the women is was rather difficult to find information for.
[4] Clara Osborne Botzum was a state legislator in the 1940s and 1950s, including serving as chair of the state mining committee.
[5] Rose Mofford was Arizona's first female Secretary of State and first female governor.
[6] Annie Dodge Wauneka was the second woman to serve on the Navajo Tribal Council, and in 1963 became the first Native American to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her efforts to improve health and medicine in the Navajo Nation.
[7] Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, on which she served from 1981 to 2006.
[8] Harriet Babbitt served as First Lady of Arizona as governor Bruce Babbitt's wife 1978 to 1987, and was appointed US ambassador to the OAS during the first term of the Clinton administration.
 

wilcoxchar

Arkansas, Class II
Hattie Caraway (D): 1925-1931 [1]
Roberta Fulbright (D): 1931-1937 [2]
Hattie Caraway (D): 1937-1949
Pearl Peden Oldfield (D): 1949-1961 [3]
Effiegene Locke Wingo (D): 1961-1963* [4]
Catherine Norrell (D): 1963-1967 [5]
Daisy Gatson Bates (D): 1967-1973 [6]
Ada Mills (R): 1973-1979 [7]
Hillary Rodhan Clinton (D): 1979-2009
Lottie Shackelford (D): 2009-present [8]

[1] It wouldn't be right to not make Arkansas's first women Senator the first woman elected to a full term in the Senate, Hattie Caraway. Caraway was Senator from 1931 to 1945 in OTL.
[2] Roberta Fulbright was a prominent newspaper editor and publisher, and while never serving elective office in OTL, was prominent in Arkansas Democratic Party politicking during her life. She is related to J. William Fulbright - Roberta is his mother and was highly influential in getting him elected to the Senate.
[3] Pearl Oldfield was the first woman elected to Congress from Arkansas. Before Hattie Caraway, Pearl Oldfield served from 1929 to 1931 following the death of Rep. William Oldfield, her husband.
[4] In OTL, as Pearl Oldfield was wrapping up her term in the House, Rep. Otis Wingo died. His widow, Effiegene Wingo, was elected to serve the remainder of his term. Thus, for a few months in 1930, Arkansas became the first state with more than one woman in Congress.
[5] Catherine Norrell was a Congresswoman from 1961 to 1963, appointed to serve out the term of her late husband William Norrell.
[6] Daisy Gatson Bates was an African-American civil rights activist, who had such roles as leading the Arkansas NAACP, running the largest black newspaper in the state, and advising and helping to select the students of the Little Rock Nine.
[7] Ada Mills was a delegate to several Republican National Conventions and notably cast the only delegate vote for John Connally at the 1980 Republican convention.
[8] Lottie Shackelford was the first black woman (and first woman) mayor of Little Rock and has served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention every convention since 1980 and as a vice chair since 1988.
 

Emperor Julian

Um, what changed that a black woman could get elected Senator from Alabama in 1996? Especially one who would just be a 31 year old who just started working at a law firm in New York City two years before.
 

wilcoxchar

Emperor Julian said:
Um, what changed that a black woman could get elected Senator from Alabama in 1996? Especially one who would just be a 31 year old who just started working at a law firm in New York City two years before.
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Huh. I actually didn't realize Sewell was that young.

Probably a combination of things though. One of the assumptions I'm making going into this is that with already a huge break down of the walls to diversity in politics with the women Senate seat, racism and other negative attitudes toward minority representation in Congress break down faster as well (partly as a way to let me highlight more minority women as with Daisy Gatson Bates). Looking at Terri Sewell's OTL experience, probably she either stays in Alabama or in DC and is either continuing to clerk for Howell Heflin as she did in OTL or for Cornelia Wallace instead of Richard Shelby, or continues to work with U. W. Clemon before running for Senate.

With these lists I'll generally try to keep things fairly plausible, but yeah some of them will be a stretch with earlier career advancement. Usually it will be either in cases where it's difficult to find people for the time covered, or occasionally just because I like the idea and the years was the best way to make it fit with the others.
 

wilcoxchar

California, Class III
Elizabeth Hughes (R): 1927-1933 [1]
Esto Bates Broughton (D): 1933-1939 [2]
Florence Kahn (R): 1939-1945 [3]
Esto Bates Broughton (D): 1945-1951
Helen Gahagan Douglas (D): 1951-1975 [4]
Bobbi Fiedler (R): 1975-1987 [5]
Dianne Feinstein (D): 1987-1993
Kathleen Brown (D): 1993-1999
Dianne Feinstein (D): 1999-2009
Maxine Waters (D): 2009-present

[1] Elizabeth Hughes was one of the four legislators elected to the California State Assembly in 1918.
[2] So was Estos Bates Broughton. Broughton was the only Democrat of the four, and was the youngest woman elected to the legislature until 2002.
[3] Florence Kahn was the fifth woman elected to the House and the first Jewish woman to serve. Appointed following the death of her husband Julius Kahn, Florence represented California's 4th district from 1925 to 1937.
[4] Helen Gahagan Douglas was an actress and politician, and the first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California. She is most remembered now for her Senate run in 1950 in OTL. In the primary, her opponent Manchester Boddy referred to her as the "Pink Lady" for alleged ties to the Soviets. Gahagan won the Democratic primary and faced Richard Nixon in the general election, where he kept the Pink Lady attack going. In return, Helen Gahagan Douglas's campaign countered by reprising and popularizing the Boddy campaign's name for Nixon; Tricky Dick.
 

oberdada

Interesting Idea. A female Quota is otherwise almost impossible in a FPTP system.

But at least in theory this could work.
 

wilcoxchar

Colorado, Class III
Mary Rippon (D): 1927-1933 (1926) [1]
Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino (Prog.): 1933-1936* [2]
Florence Sabin (R): 1937-1945 [3]
Josephine Roche (D): 1945-1957 [4]
Caroline Bancroft (D): 1957-1963 [5]
Elise Boulding (R, D after 1970): 1963-1970, 1970-1975 [6]
Ruth Stockton (R): 1975-1987 [7]
Patricia Schroeder (D): 1987-2005
Gale Norton (R): 2005-2017
Kerry Donovan (D): 2017-present [8]

[1] Mary Rippon was the first female professor at the University of Colorado and one of the first female professors in the United States. She taught there from 1878, starting just two years into the university's existence, to her death in 1935.
[2] Minnie "M. J." Reynolds was a journalist for the Rocky Mountain News, press chair of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association, and a state legislative candidate for the Populist Party.
[3] Florence Sabin was the first woman inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and conducted years of medical research focusing on tuberculosis. Later she was appointed to chair Colorado's health committee in the 1940s, and helped pass laws modernizing the state's health system.
[4] Josephine Roche was a businesswoman and labor activist, who among other things inherited a coal mining company from her father in 1927 and then, unlike other coal mines at the time, offered the UMWA to unionize its workers. She later ran for governor and was appointed Assistant Treasury Secretary by FDR.
[5] Caroline Bancroft performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and later became a noted historian and journalist for the Denver Post.
[6] Elise Boulding was a peace activist and pioneering academic in peace and conflict studies. She ran for Congress in Michigan in 1966 as a write-in peace candidate to protest Vietnam.
[7] Ruth Stockton was a state senator fro 23 years and the first woman to serve as president pro tempore of the Colorado state senate.
[8] Kerry Donovan is currently a state senator since 2015 serving one of the rural mountain districts.
 
Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg

Banned
One bad thing that I could see coming of this is a potential strengthening of the anti-Trans side, as some TERFs may rally against Trans females who try to run in these elections, saying that they are "not real women". I do think the proposal is rather interesting, though. Keep up the good work
 

wilcoxchar

Connecticut, Class III
Katherine Hepburn (D): 1927-1939 [1]
Alice Paul (R-NWP): 1939-1951 [2]
Chase G. Woodhouse (D): 1951-1969 [3]
Clare Luce (R): 1969-1975 [4]
Ella T. Grasso (D): 1975-1981 [5]
Maria Colon Sanchez (D): 1981-1987 [6]
Catherine Roraback (R): 1987-1999 [7]
Jodi Rell (R): 1999-2005
Rosa DeLauro (D): 2005-present [8]

[1] No, not that Katherine Hepburn... this is her mother. Katherine Houghton Hepburn was a suffragette, member of the National Women's Party, and co-founder of Planned Parenthood. In 1920 the Democrats asked her to run for Senate, but she declined as her husband, while he supported her work, did not want her to campaign for office.
[2] What, like I wasn't going to make Alice Paul a Senator at some point? I couldn't quickly find anything on how long Connecticut has had its fusion balloting, but if it wasn't in place at the time in OTL assume it was.
[3] Chase Woodhouse was a Connecticut Secretary of State and served two nonconsecutive terms in the US House. During her second term from 1949 to 1951, Woodhouse was the first Secretary of the Democratic Caucus, a position originally created in 1949 and reserved for a woman in the House that was abolished in 1987 and became the position of Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus.
[4] Clare Luce was a two-term Representative for Connecticut's 4th district and served as ambassador to Italy and Brazil during the Eisenhower administration. She was married to editor Henry Luce and became a prominent conservative and anticommunist voice, supporting Barry Goldwater for president in 1964.
[5] Ella Grasso was Secretary of State, US Representative, and governor of Connecticut. She was the first female governor of Connecticut and the first woman to be elected governor of a state without being the spouse or widow of a former governor.
[6] Maria Colon Sanchez was an activist for Puerto Rico and bilingual education, and the first Hispanic woman elected to the Connecticut General Assembly.
[7] Catherine Roraback was the attorney representing Estelle Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton in the landmark Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, which reversed a Connecticut law banning birth control. She also defended many other cases involving women's rights and civil rights, including representing Communists in from of HUAC and representing Black Panther activists in the New Haven Black Panther trials.
[8] Rosa DeLauro is the current Representative for Connecticut's 3rd district, having served since 1991.
 

wilcoxchar

Delaware, Class II
Florence Bayard Hilles (D): 1925-1943 [1]
Vera Gilbride Davis (R): 1943-1949 [2]
Esther Schauer Frear (D): 1949-1967 [3]
Roxanne Cannon Arsht (R): 1967-1991 [4]
Stephanie Kwolek (R): 1991-1997 [5]
Margaret Rose Henry (D): 1997-2003 [6]
M. Jane Brady (R): 2003-2009 [7]
Karen E. Peterson (D): 2009-2015 [8]
Christine O'Donnell (R): 2015-present

[1] Florence Bayard Hilles is the daughter of Senator and Secretary of State Thomas Bayard, and was a national chair of the National Woman's Party in the 1930s.
[2] Vera Davis was Delaware's first woman in the state senate, first woman elected President Pro Tem of the Delaware Senate, and first woman elected to a statewide office when she became State Treasurer in 1956.
[3] Esther Frear was the wife of United States Senator J. Allen Frear, and a member of the Senate Ladies Red Cross Unit.
[4] Roxanna Arsht was the first woman to hold a judicial position in the state, serving on the Delaware Family Court from 1971 to 1983. She was a dedicated philanthropist following her judicial career.
[5] Stephanie Kwolek was a chemist at DuPont and the inventor of Kevlar.
[6] Margaret Rose Henry was a longtime state senator, holding office since 1994 and serving as Senate Majority Leader.
[7] M. Jane Brady was the first woman attorney general in Delaware, holding the office from 1995 to 2005. She then became a judge on the Delaware Superior Court.
[8] Karen Peterson was a state senator from 2002 to 2017. In 2013 she came out as a lesbian, becoming the first open LGBT legislator in the state.
 

Mikestone8

wilcoxchar said:
Huh. I actually didn't realize Sewell was that young.

Probably a combination of things though. One of the assumptions I'm making going into this is that with already a huge break down of the walls to diversity in politics with the women Senate seat, racism and other negative attitudes toward minority representation in Congress break down faster as well.
Click to expand...


Why? OTL's 19th Amendment had no such effect
 

wilcoxchar

Florida, Class III
Ruth Bryan Owen (D): 1927-1951 [1]
Lillie Pierce Voss (D): 1951-1957 [2]
Elizabeth McCullough Johnson (D): 1957-1975 [3]
Wilhelmina Celesta Goehring Harvey (D): 1975-1987 [4]
M. Athalie Range (D): 1987-1999 [5]
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R): 1999-present [6]

[1] Ruth Bryan Owen was Florida's first woman in Congress, and also served as FDR's ambassador to Denmark. She was also William Jennings Bryan's daughter.
[2] Lille Pierce Voss was a daughter of one of the first white families to settle in southeast Florida, and she and her husband played a significant role in early white settlement in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach area.
[3] Elizbaeth Johnson was the first woman in the Florida state senate. During her term in office, she was a leading advocate for the establishment of the University of Central Florida.
[4] Wilhelmina Harvey was a giant of Florida Keys politics and the first female mayor and commissioner of Monroe County. Harvey was also Admiral and First Sea Lord of the Conch Republic.
[5] M. Athalie Range was a Bahamian-American civil rights activist and the first African-American to serve on the Miami city commission. She was also Reubin Askew's Secretary of Community Affairs, becoming the first African-American to run a department in the state since Reconstruction, and later was appointed by President Carter to the national Amtrak board.
[6] Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is the first Cuban-American and Latina elected to Congress, having represented Florida's 27th district since 1989.
 

wilcoxchar

Mikestone8 said:
Why? OTL's 19th Amendment had no such effect
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Many of the women's suffragists were also key figures in other civil rights movements at the time and later on. ITTL, many of them are now in the Senate and actually have policymaking power. Additionally, once you break down the first barrier especially destroying it as much as it has been ITTL, it becomes easier to argue for breaking down other barriers.
 

Mikestone8

wilcoxchar said:
Many of the women's suffragists were also key figures in other civil rights movements at the time and later on. ITTL, many of them are now in the Senate and actually have policymaking power. Additionally, once you break down the first barrier especially destroying it as much as it has been ITTL, it becomes easier to argue for breaking down other barriers.
Click to expand...


Would women voters actually vote for suffragists? Iirc most of them voted for Harding, who wasn't exactly a radical reformer.

And would white women voters have any more interest in Black rights than white men voters?

After all, when Blacks got the vote during Reconstruction, that didn't lead to women getting it. Why should the reverse be at more likely?
 

wilcoxchar

Georgia, Class III
Susan Cobb Milton Atkinson (D): 1927-1939 [1]
Viola Ross Napier (D): 1939-1957 [2]
Lillian Carter (D): 1957-1963 [3]
Betty Russell Vandiver (D): 1963-1975 [4]
Lillian Carter (D): 1975-1981
Ruth Carter Stapleton (D): 1981-1983* [5]
Rosalynn Carter (D): 1983-1993 [6]
Coretta Scott King (D): 1993-1999
Anne Mueller (R): 1999-2011 [7]
Karen Handel (R): 2011-present

[1] Susan Milton Atkinson was the wife of Georgia governor William Yates Atkinson, and as First Lady was a strong proponent of college education for women in the late 19th century.
[2] Viola Ross Napier was the first female lawyer to argue in front of the Georgia Supreme Court, and was one of the first women elected to the Georgia state House.
[3] If you thought Rosalynn Carter would be the first Carter on this list (if you thought any Carters would be on this list), you thought wrong! Lillian Carter is of course Jimmy Carter's mother. She also was a nurse practitioner serving black and white communities equally in Plains and a desegregation activist, and later became a Peace Corps Volunteer at the age of 68.
[4] Betty Russell Vandiver was one of the members of the Russell family. She was the granddaughter of Richard Russell Sr. and niece of Richard Russell Jr. She married Ernest Vandiver, and she and her family were prominent figures in Vandiver's campaign and governorship of Georgia.
[5] Ruth Carter Stapleton was one of Jimmy Carter's sisters, and became known as a Christian evangelist and for her healing.
[6] Rosalynn Carter is the wife of Jimmy Carter, and was one of Carter's closest advisers during his presidency. Rosalynn sat in on cabinet meetings and advocated policy as First Lady, most notably in her advocacy for mental health research. She traveled abroad frequently as an envoy during and after her husband's presidency.
[7] Anne Mueller was a member of the state Republican Party organization, serving as Savannah area director and was later elected to the state house and served as House Minority Caucus Secretary. I actually can't definitively find what years she was in office, except she likely was elected in 1982 or 1983 and her seat was in jeopardy after the 2000 redistricting.
 

wilcoxchar

Mikestone8 said:
Would women voters actually vote for suffragists? Iirc most of them voted for Harding, who wasn't exactly a radical reformer.

And would white women voters have any more interest in Black rights than white men voters?

After all, when Blacks got the vote during Reconstruction, that didn't lead to women getting it. Why should the reverse be at more likely?
Click to expand...
It might not be likely, but it's certainly possible for things to shake out that way, especially as we get to the 50s and 60s, and that's how it does ITTL. Note that most of the minority women who become Senators early so far, such as Daisy Gatson Bates, only serve one term, implying that their election was unlikely and probably either a unique product of that year or that there may have been a third party spoiler involved.

Regarding Reconstruction, women did start getting the vote shortly after. Wyoming and Utah Territories granted women complete voting rights in 1869, and it was during the Reconstruction era that women began receiving the right to vote in minor things like school board elections. Also, many women suffragists including Susan B. Anthony and Virginia Minor adopted the New Departure strategy, which argued that the Fourteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote as well as blacks. The argument made it all the way to the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett, which ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not guarantee anyone the right to vote.

Kaiser_Wilhelm said:
Ya know, I was excited for Georgia and then you made Karen Handel a Senator. :p
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Well I couldn't make it entirely better, now could I? :p Also with Georgia, ALL the Carters!

historybuff said:
So far so good, you've done your research, but, how do you pick who would've been a senator for which state?
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I'm trying to keep a little bit with the political climate of each election, though not really the exact party representation. This creates a bit of an issue with 1938 since all the Class III seats are up and that was a huge Republican wave year as FDR's sixth year midterm. Other than that though, it's mostly just if I find people that are interesting, usually politically active (even better if they actually ran for something), and fit the time of office. I'm also trying to do a decent mix of more well known and more obscure women.
 
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