US midterm elections: The candidates making history

Projected results are rolling in, and whilst all victories are special, some make history. Here are the candidates changing the record books in the 2022 midterms.

Republican candidate Katie Britt, 40, will be elected as Alabama’s first woman to serve in the US Senate, according to projections from the BBC’S US partner CBS News.

Ms Britt will replace Senator Richard Shelby, who is retiring at the end of this term after 36 years in the Senate. She beat Democrat Will Boyd to secure the position.

“I am humbled, I am honoured and grateful,” she said to supporters.

Fifty-eight women so far have served as US senators since the first was elected in 1932 – in a chamber which has 100 members.

Britt said that she would be the only female Republican with school-age children in the Senate, pledging to build a better future for young people and calling 2022 “the year of the parent”.

Democrat Maxwell Frost, 25, is projected to win in Florida’s 10th Congressional District. Born in 1997, he is the first member of Generation Z elected to serve in the US Congress.

His win was not an unexpected one, with his campaign focusing on gun violence, climate change, abortion rights and expanded healthcare, which appealed to younger voters.

Frost may not be the only Gen Z candidate elected in 2022. Republican Karoline Leavitt is also running in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District.

But he is believed to be the first Afro-Cuban to serve.

Democrat Maura Healey, 51, the projected winner of Massachusetts’s gubernatorial race, is the first lesbian to be elected governor.

Ms Healey defeated Republican Geoff Diehl, a former state representative who had the endorsement of Donald Trump. Her win ends eight years of Republican leadership after Charlie Baker opted not to seek re-election.

She is one of two openly lesbian candidates who have run for governor this year. Tina Kotek is running for governor in Oregon.

Ms Healey is the second woman to hold the position of governor of Massachusetts – Republican Jane Swift was elected in 2001.

During her campaign, Ms Healey pledged to make childcare more affordable, expand job training programs and was vocal on her views on the US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v Wade in June, and her wish for access to safe and legal abortion in her state.

A name that will be familiar to many due to her time spent as President Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, 40, is projected to win Arkansas’s race for governor, making her the first woman to hold that position in the state.

She faced Democratic rival Chris Jones and was heavily favoured to win in the predominantly Republican state.

Sanders succeeds fellow Republican Asa Hutchinson, who is leaving office in January due to term limits.

Although the first woman to become governor of Arkansas, Sanders is no stranger to the governor’s mansion, as her father Mike Sanders held the post from 1996 to 2007.

Sanders broke the Arkansas gubernatorial fundraising record by raising over $9m (£7.7m) and regularly promised to use the office to fight President Joe Biden and the “radical left”.

Democrat Wes Moore, 44, has also made history as Maryland’s first black governor. He is only the third black governor elected in the nation’s 246-year history, alongside Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Douglas Wilder of Virginia.

Moore is a best-selling author and former head of the anti-poverty organisation Robin Hood.

He told supporters on Tuesday evening: “It is not lost on me that I’ve made some history here tonight. But I also know I’m not the first one to try.

“I am humbled to be a part of this legacy. That’s not why we got into this race. The history that matters most to us is the history that we and the people of this state are going to make over the next four years.”

Republican Markwayne Mullin, 35, is projected to make history as the first Native American senator from Oklahoma in almost 100 years.

The seat has been held by Republicans since 1987.

A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2012 and became part of the Congressional Native American Caucus.

The last Native American candidate to serve in the Senate was Ben “Nighthorse” Campbell, of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. He retired in 2005 following two terms as senator and three terms in the House.

Democrat James Roesener, 26, is projected to become the first openly transgender man to be to elected to any state legislature in US history.

Roesener is one of a record number of trans candidates to run for office this year.

He is fighting for the right to access to abortion in his state, New Hampshire, the right to equal pay for women, and supporting legislation that ensures the protection of same-sex rights, including protecting recognition of same-sex marriage.

Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul is projected to win election in New York, the first woman to be voted into the state’s highest office.

She is set to beat Republican Lee Zeldin in what’s projected to be the closest governor victory in at least two decades.

Mrs Hochul took office in August 2021 after former Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

She has vowed to focus on housing, reducing gun violence and building economic opportunity in her first full term, as well as protecting abortion rights.

Democratic state Representative Delia Ramirez, 39, is projected to be the first Latina elected to Congress from the state of Illinois.

That would mean she beats Republican Justin Burau in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District.

“We just made history tonight,” Ramirez told her supporters on election night. “We broke a glass ceiling.”

In 2018, Ramirez became the first Guatemalan American elected to the Illinois General Assembly. She has worked on affordable housing and to protect abortion rights in the state whilst there.