Democrats Take Back Control of House with Sweeping Victories While GOP Keeps Control of Senate
President Donald Trump appears to be facing a rebuke of his highly criticized policies and racially-charged rhetoric as Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
The Democrats took control of the House by picking up at least 24 seats, while Republicans were guaranteed to keep control of the Senate. The GOP appeared poised late Tuesday night to potentially expand its 51-49 Senate majority after flipping two Democratic seats in Indiana and North Dakota.
The first seat of the night to flip came around 8 p.m. when State Senator Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) won the election for Virginia’s 10th District, unseating incumbent Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock.
Donna Shalala, 77, the ex-Cabinet secretary for President Bill Clinton, claimed the night’s second flip for Democrats and will be heading back to Washington, D.C., after winning a House seat in Florida.
Sharice Davids made history when she became the first Native American woman elected to Congress after defeating four-term Republican incumbent Kevin Yoder for Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District.
Two female U.S. Naval Academy graduates completed a mission that no female Annapolis graduates before them had accomplished — winning a seat in Congress.
In New Jersey’s 11th district, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, 46, a former federal prosecutor and United States Navy helicopter pilot, defeated Trump-backed New Jersey Assemblyman Jay Webber, flipping a district that has been a Republican stonghold for decades.
And in Virginia, Annapolis grad Elaine Luria, a commander of an assault ship that patrolled the Persian Gulf, defeated Republican Rep. Scott Taylor.
In New York, Democrat Max Rose, an Army veteran wounded in Afghanistan, defeated Rep. Dan Donovan, unseating the only Republican member of New York City’s congressional delegation in a district that was Trump Country in 2016.
And Democrats Rashida Tlaib, 42, and Ilhan Omar became the first Muslim women elected to Congress.
Tlaib won Michigan’s 13th district and Omar, who arrived in the United States at 14 after fleeing civil war in Somalia, won Minnesota’s 5th congressional district.
In New York, Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, become the youngest woman ever in Congress.
This has been called the year of the woman — and many decided to run following the election of Trump.
For the first time in history, Americans had the chance to elect more than 100 women to the House of Representatives, David Wasserman, the U.S. House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told USA Today.
“That would not be occurring without Donald Trump in the White House,” Wasserman told the paper. “It is a direct reaction to his election.”
The majority of the women who ran for House seats – 185 – were Democrats, while 52 were Republicans.
