Four Black women are Senate nominees this year. Their wins could change the chamber’s makeup—and expand the voices shaping policy on pay, health care, and caregiving.
Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon is asking voters to do something the state has never done: elect a Black woman to the U.S. Senate.
Her opponent, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis after Marco Rubio left the seat to become secretary of state. Nixon is running to complete the final two years of Rubio’s term.
Nixon’s challenge is bigger than taking on an incumbent. Florida has shifted steadily to the right and now has 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats. Democrats have not won a Senate race there since 2012.
Moody is backed by President Donald Trump and DeSantis. Nixon’s central argument is affordability, with rising costs for housing, groceries, health care and child care.
“We can’t afford to go on like this,” she said when she launched her campaign.
Nixon is one of 72 Black women nominees on the midterm ballot for the Senate, House and statewide offices combined, according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics and Higher Heights. The four Senate nominees are Nixon, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, Memphis environmental activist Marquita Bradshaw, and Oklahoma nurse and military spouse N’Kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas. Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly also sought the Democratic nomination before Stratton advanced.
The economy isn’t a single national scorecard when families decide which bills to delay. In 2025, Black women working full time, year-round earned 64 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men.
That gap can leave less cushion for rent, medical bills, child care, or time away from work to care for family. Federal Reserve data shows 21 percent of Black adults provided unpaid care to another adult, compared with 16 percent of white adults; women overall did so more often than men. Wages, health care, housing and caregiving shape a family’s monthly choices.
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The history makes this moment sharper. Carol Moseley Braun became the first Black woman elected to the Senate in 1992, serving Illinois for one term. California elected Kamala Harris in 2016, making her the second. Laphonza Butler’s 2023 appointment followed California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s death. Each served alone.
Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks and Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester are the first two Black women to serve together in the Senate. Wins by Stratton and Nixon could double that number. Bradshaw and Thomas could raise it further.
In a joint interview with The 19th, Blunt Rochester said she and Alsobrooks “don’t even have to say a word” across the caucus room.
Sometimes it’s an understood look, side-eye or head nod that says what words don’t have to. The four women have discussed housing, caregiving, fibroids, uterine cancer and heart disease. Blunt Rochester sees a chance for senators to coordinate before votes, a “meeting before the meeting.” The support they offer one another, and the policy work they could do together, are part of what’s at stake.
In Tennessee, Bradshaw faces Republican incumbent Bill Hagerty in a rematch of their 2020 race. She would become the first Black woman to serve in Congress from Tennessee and the first Democratic woman elected to its Senate seat. In Oklahoma, Thomas faces Republican Kevin Hern.
A win would make her the first woman, and the first Black or Native American woman, to represent Oklahoma in the Senate. The candidates face different political terrain from Stratton in Illinois.
The Senate shapes policy on health care, jobs, voting rights, and the cost of living. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms could become the state’s first woman governor and the nation’s first Black woman governor.
Two years after Harris lost the presidential race, and after Black women’s employment declined by 251,000 in 2025, four Black women serving together would show that a setback does not get the final word.
Election Day Could Put a Record Number of Black Women In the Senate