Former senators Barbara A. Mikulski and Margaret Chase Smith were honored last week at a dedication ceremony.
For the first time in more than 230 years of Senate history, two rooms were formally named last week in honor of women: Mikulski , who retired at the end of 2016 as the longest-serving female senator, and the late Margaret Chase Smith , the first woman to win election to the House and the Senate, and who stood up to McCarthyism in the 1950s.
Klobuchar connects this effort to the other side of the movement to remove statues of Confederate figures and other controversial figures from history, to create a positive vision of history.“So it isn’t just about taking statues down, which is meritorious in many cases, but that’s where all our focus is — I think we have to add things,” Klobuchar said.
One day it hit Klobuchar: A couple of times a week, each Senate caucus gathers in the Mike Mansfield Room or the Lyndon Baines Johnson Room, named after former Democratic majority leaders whose portraits look down on senators.Across the hall from the Mansfield Room is the Robert J. Dole balcony, named for the late Republican from Kansas who served as majority leader.
“Architecture tells a lot about the Senate and its views on women,” Mikulski, who served for 30 years and became the first woman to chair the powerful Appropriations Committee, said at last week’s ceremony. “This is a glass ceiling plan. This creates a glass ceiling for women,” Mikulski told the building officials, according to Klobuchar’s account. She demanded they build a much bigger women’s room, which they did.As their ranks started to grow, Mikulski began hosting regular dinners just for female senators and some special guests, sometimes in the Capitol and sometimes at private spaces in restaurants around town.
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