Midterms Bring a Run of Firsts to the Senate and Governors' Offices
Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim American elected to the U.S. Senate, according to Town & Country. The magazine's list of barrier-breaking winners from Tuesday's midterm elections runs long, and it reaches from Congress to state capitols.
The Senate is the 100-member chamber of Congress, the national legislature. Each state elects two senators. Several of this year's winners will be the first of their kind to hold the seat.
Josh Turek won his Senate race in Iowa. He is a two-time Paralympic gold medalist with Team USA wheelchair basketball. Town & Country reports he will be the first Paralympian to serve in the Senate, and the first senator with spina bifida, a condition in which the spine and spinal cord do not fully form before birth.
Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the Senate, winning in New Hampshire. Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, is projected by CNN to become the first Native American senator in U.S. history. She would also be the first senator from Minnesota who is Native American. Her win helped Democrats take back the Senate, according to MPR News.
Control of Congress also changed hands. The Associated Press reported that Democrats won control of Congress and took seven Senate seats across red and battleground states. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton to flip a Senate seat, the Associated Press reported in a separate story.
The governors' races produced firsts too. Keisha Lance Bottoms became Georgia's first Black governor and first female governor. Town & Country also lists her as the first Black woman elected governor of any U.S. state. Xavier Becerra, who previously served as U.S. secretary of health and human services, was elected the first Latino governor of California.
In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa unseated three-term Republican governor Greg Abbott, according to The Guardian. She becomes the first Latina governor of Texas and the first Democrat to hold the job there in more than three decades. Deb Haaland, a former U.S. secretary of the interior, will be the first Native American woman to serve as governor. CNN also reported that the election produced Florida's first Black governor.
Democrats also won a majority of the nation's governorships, the Associated Press reported in a separate story. A governor runs a state's executive branch, the office that carries out state laws.
Town & Country gathered its list under the title "19 Candidates Who Made History in the 2026 Midterms." Some of the firsts are final. Others, like Flanagan's Senate seat and Haaland's governorship, are described as projected or set to begin when the new terms start.
