Whether or not you support Trump, we can all agree that his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton has been the talk of the week. It has dominated our Facebook newsfeeds, Twitter and even Instagram. What follows are some election milestones that may have been overshadowed by the presidential election, but are no less significant.
1. Oregon elected the nation's first openly LGBT governor, Kate Brown.
Governor Brown (D-OR) was appointed to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1991, then to the Oregon State Senate. Being the first openly bisexual governor isn’t the only barrier she’s broken; she was also elected Oregon’s first female Senate Majority Leader in 2004. She later ran for Secretary of State in 2008 and won.
2. California elected the first Indian-American female senator and the second African-American female senator, Kamala Harris. (Senator-elect Harris is both African-American and Indian-American).
Harris (D-CA) worked as a Deputy District Attorney in California’s Alameda County in the 1990s, before she moved to District Attorney of San Francisco. She has been California’s Attorney General since 2010.
3. Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar became America’s first Somali-American representative.
Omar (D-MN) is the Director of Policy & Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network. After she was born in Somalia in 1982, her family fled the country and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She then emigrated to the U.S, where she started her political career as the campaign manager for a Minnesota State Senate campaign.
4. Nevada elected Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina senator.
Masto (D-NV) was Nevada’s Attorney General from 2007 to 2015, but ran for Senate to fill Harry Reid’s empty seat in Congress. She supports investing in renewable energy research, protecting seniors via legislation and strengthening laws to prevent sex trafficking and violence against women.
5. Florida elected the first Vietnamese-American woman to the House of Representatives, Stephanie Murphy.
Born in Vietnam in 1978, Murphy (D-FL) and her family left a refugee camp by boat a year later. They ran out of fuel but were rescued by the U.S Navy. Her parents each worked two jobs to send her to college, and Murphy later graduated from Georgetown with a Masters in foreign service. After 9/11, she worked for the U.S Department of Defense as a national security specialist.
6. Pramila Jayapal is the first Indian-American woman to hold a seat in the House of Representatives.
Jayapal (D-WA) is a civil rights activist who worked as the director of the group OneAmerica, a pro-immigration advocacy organization. Founded just after 9/11, this group works to register new citizens to vote, lobbies for immigration reforms, and supports Arab-, Muslim-, and South Asian-Americans.