Introducing America's new senators

Butch Cassidy: "Who are those guys?"

  -- later --

Sundance Kid: "Who are those guys?"

  -- later --

Butch Cassidy: "They're beginning to get on my nerves. Who ARE those guys?"

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," 1969

Trump commands center stage, but he is not alone. The U.S. Senate has 14 new people.

The U.S. Senate is going through a rough patch. Its reputation is not of a "great deliberative body." Nearly all its controversial votes are along party lines, which turns it into a tabulating machine, not a deliberative one. And Trump remains center stage; most of the attention the Senate gets is whether any Republicans (perhaps Susan Collins of Maine or Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) will dare dissent from Trump's expectations.

But the U.S. Senate -- if it exercised its power -- could be an enormous check on the president and a full partner in shaping American government. That might emerge, particularly if Trump's initiatives become unpopular to his base, which I predict. So who are those guys? 

College classmate Ben Beach wrote me to answer that question. He is a mostly-retired writer and editor, now living in Alexandria, Virginia. He set a record for the most consecutive finishes in the Boston Marathon: 54. That record was broken in April.

Beach

Guest Post by Ben Beach

You probably know that we have a new—well, sort of new—president. By the way, like the only other president to be returned to office after a loss (Grover Cleveland), Donald Trump is a New Yorker and heavy. Their weights rank them second (260 pounds for Cleveland) and third (237 pounds for Trump) among presidents. Of course, they are skin and bones compared to the 332-pound William Howard Taft.

When we elected Trump, we also elected a new Senate. Including the two who were just appointed to replace Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there are 14 new senators. They include the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected, and never before have two Black women served simultaneously. The two are Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of neighboring Maryland. During Rochester’s 2017 House swearing-in, she carried a scarf imprinted with her great-great-great-grandfather's Reconstruction-era voter registration card. He had been a slave.

The election of Alsobrooks and Rochester increased the number of women in “the world’s greatest deliberative body” from 24 to 26. Four states have two female senators: Washington, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

The current Senate also includes its first two Colombian-American members (Bernie Moreno, OH, and Ruben Gallego, AZ) and its first Korean American (Andy Kim, NJ). Gallego and his three sisters were raised by their single mother in a disadvantaged community, and he slept on the floor until he went to college. At Harvard.

Another newbie who had to overcome a difficult challenge is Ohio’s John Husted, just named to replace Vance. Husted, who rose to become his state’s lieutenant governor, was born in the Detroit area and immediately placed for adoption. He has stated that his biological father did not want him and his biological mother was unable to care for him.

Half of the new senators had served in the House of Representatives, a common launching pad. The group of 14 is heavy on military experience. Montana’s Tim Sheehy was a Navy SEAL, West Point grad Dave McCormick (PA) was a paratrooper in Iraq, Gallego served in Iraq with the Marines, and Indiana’s Jim Banks is an Afghanistan War veteran. Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin is a former CIA officer.

Rubio’s replacement, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, has some interesting Trump history. She and members of her family once sued him, accusing him of fraud in a dispute over a Tampa condominium project that was never built. The case was settled in 2011, and Moody has said she cannot discuss it. Since that dispute, Moody has become a supporter of the president.

Republicans have a disappointing record on climate change, at least in my view. But Senator Mitt Romney’s successor, John Curtis, does consider it a serious issue. Curtis, who converted to the Democratic Party at age 40 but returned to the GOP six years later, founded the Conservative Climate Caucus during his seven years in the House. That’s a plus, but the League of Conservation Voters gave Curtis a score of just six percent over his tenure.

Most of the new senators have parental experience. Both Curtis and McCormick have six children—all girls in the latter’s case. As of last count, Curtis also has 17 grandchildren. That’s a whole lot of names and birthdays to remember, but he’ll have a larger staff in the Senate to help him.

The new senators range in age from 39 (Sheehy, founder of an aerial firefighting company) to 73 (Jim Justice, former West Virginia governor, who is often accompanied by his English bulldog named Babydog).

Looking at the entire Senate, 60 percent identify as Protestant, including one Quaker, Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper. There are also 23 Catholics, nine Jews, three Latter-day Saints, and one Buddhist (Mazie Hirono of Hawaii). No Muslims.

Eleven percent are named John, not including Georgia’s Jon Ossoff. Among the 26 women, you can’t find more than two with the same first name.

That should be enough trivia to get you through your next cocktail party.

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