It took 94 years for Kansas to elect another Democratic U.S. senator. It took the entire history of the United States for a Black woman to be elected governor. Both happened on Tuesday night—two significant milestones amid a night of major triumphs, firsts, and history-making moments.
The 2026 midterm elections delivered a political earthquake, with a series of candidates and statewide contests drawing national attention. Democrats reclaimed control of both chambers of Congress, flipping seven Senate seats—including in Republican strongholds where the party had not won in decades. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor in American history. In New Mexico, Deb Haaland became the first Native American woman elected to lead a state, while Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan became the first Native American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Michigan elected the country’s first Muslim senator, Abdul El-Sayed, and New Hampshire its first openly gay male senator, Chris Pappas. And longstanding political barriers fell elsewhere—from Texas electing its first Latina governor to Florida electing its first Black governor, Republican Byron Donalds.
And it was true that the gubernatorial races sent shockwaves from state to state. In California, Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. secretary of health and human services, became the first Latino ever elected governor of the state. And both Nevada and Wisconsin elected their first Black governors: Attorney General Aaron Ford and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, respectively. Minnesota elected its first woman governor in Amy Klobuchar, who will leave behind her seat in the U.S. Senate after two decades. And in Ohio, former state health director Amy Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to become the first woman elected governor in the state’s history.
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