The bid to unseat the last New England Republican in Congress

WHEN CONGRESS convened in January 2001, 11 of the 35 senators and representatives from New England were Republicans. That was not unusual: just as the South is ancestrally Democratic, much of New England is ancestrally Republican. Vermont has only ever elected one Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy, and between 1850 and 2007 elected just two Democratic representatives, who both served only one term (Bernie Sanders caucuses with Democrats but is an independent). The first African-American to win popular election to the Senate was Edward Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts. The first woman to serve in both houses of Congress was Margaret Smith, a Republican from Maine.