Angela Rye moderates a Sept. 13 panel, “Black Women Belong…In the Senate,” at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s conference. Others, from left, are Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Senate candidates from Maryland and Delaware, respectively, and Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.). Photo by William J. Ford
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) said she understood the significance of math when she walked into the U.S. Senate chamber last year as just the third Black woman and 12th Black person ever to serve in the chamber.
Butler, who will step down when her term expires in January, said the number of elected Black women senators could double this fall if voters elect U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D).
“I’m so excited that we are about to move beyond the acceptance of having just one. We’re going to be bold enough to send two to the United States Senate,” Butler said Friday, the third day of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
“I’m excited for the doors that they are going to keep kicking open when we are no longer counting how many, but that we are welcoming women, Black women, women of color, women of all experiences and walks of life to the highest chamber in our United States government,” Butler said.
Butler was appointed to the Senate after the death of longtime California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Only two Black women have been elected to the chamber: Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was the first, in 1992, and Vice President Kamala Harris was elected in 2016 from California.
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) said Maryland “is center stage” in the fight for control of the Senate. Photo by William J. Ford
If Rochester and Alsobrooks are elected this fall, then, the total number of Black women elected to serve in the Senate in its history will double from two to four. All the women are Democrats.
In Delaware, home to President Joe Biden, Rochester is the heavy favorite to win against Republican Eric Hansen and independent Michael Katz. She has served as Delaware secretary of labor, personnel director with the state’s Office of Management and Budget, and CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League.
“We are qualified,” Rochester said. “We don’t just step up into this and it wasn’t, ‘Poof. Now I’m here.’”
Rochester said sometimes when she walks into a room with a male Senate colleague, people will “call him senator and me Lisa. It’s important how we present ourselves.”
In neighboring Maryland, Alsobrooks has a more competitive race against two-term former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican. She said her race “is center stage” in the fight to determine control of the Senate, repeating a central theme of her campaign.
“When we elect Kamala Harris to be our president, she’s going to need to have the majority in the Senate so that she can get her agenda across,” Alsobrooks said.
She also took aim at Hogan’s position on abortion, another campaign theme, saying the former governor “is, bless his heart, he’s shifting and changing and all kind of things.”
Alsobrooks noted that vetoed legislation two years ago to expand abortion access in the state, and when that veto was overridden by the Democratic-controlled legislature, he withheld state funding that would have been used to train non-physicians to perform abortions. That money was released by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore on his first day in office last year.
Hogan has pushed back on the abortion argument, saying repeatedly that while he personally opposes abortion, he would vote to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2o22.
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And the Hogan campaign this week turned the control of the Senate argument on its head with a new ad that says Hogan would be a “critical swing vote” in a closely divided Senate. To drive the point home, the campaign pointed to an endorsement of Hogan by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who often broke with his party in recent years, giving him outsized influence in the Senate.
Despite their qualifications, Rochester said women are still viewed differently than men who are elected to office.
Alsobrooks’ career spans 27 years, including serving as the county’s first full-time prosecutor to handle domestic violence cases, the youngest and first woman elected as the county state’s attorney in 2010 and the first woman elected to be county executive eight years later.
Butler was president of California’s biggest union of long-term care workers, Service Employees International Union 2015. She also served as an adviser when Harris launched a 2019 campaign for president.
If elected, Rochester said she and Alsobrooks, who affectionately call each other future “sister senator,” plan to push to codify Roe v. Wade. The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 two years ago in favor of a Mississippi ban on abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing states to set their own rules for abortion.
“I have my daughter sitting right here on the front row, and she now has less rights than we did and that ain’t right,” Rochester said. “So, we want to make sure that those who come before us and those who are here now have the right to do with their body what they want.”