The ‘pragmatic optimist’ set to make history in a divided Senate

By Paul Kane, The Washington Post

Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D) is expected to be elected Delaware’s first Black senator.

WILMINGTON, Del. — When Lisa Blunt Rochester was running to become Delaware’s first Black woman in Congress, a newspaper editorial board asked her an unusual question: Wasn’t she a bit nice for Capitol Hill?

Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) recalls trying to turn that doubt into a positive. “Well, maybe we need to do something different,” she remembered answering.

Now, after eight years as the cheerful optimist who led lawmakers in prayer and handed out masks during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, she is favored to make history again by becoming the state’s first woman in the Senate and just the fourth Black woman to ever serve in the chamber.

Her close ally from neighboring Maryland, Angela D. Alsobrooks (D), is expected to win her race. If she does, they would become the first two Black women to serve together in the Senate.

And they would probably be sworn in together by the outgoing vice president, Kamala Harris, who became just the second Black woman to serve in the Senate in 2017. By January, Harris may also be the first woman and the first Black woman to be president-elect.

“Right now, we are all in the work phase and recognize that excitement in and of itself is not enough. We’ve got to use this excitement as the fuel to make sure that we get across the finish line first,” Blunt Rochester said in one of two interviews in recent days.

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