When the 116th Congress heads to Washington in January, there will be a record number of women in the ranks — at least 123, according to the news website Axios, including the first Muslim women, the first Somali-American, and the first Native American women.
There will be more scientists too.
On Tuesday, nine new science-credentialed candidates were elected: one senator and eight members of the House.
The members of the current 115th Congress include one physicist, one microbiologist, and one nobel winning chemist, as well as eight engineers and one mathematician. The medical professions are slightly better represented, with three nurses and 15 doctors, as well as at least three veterinarians.
The new winners will bolster those science ranks. The Democratic candidates who won all ran successful campaigns with the support of a nonprofit political action committee called 314 Action, which started in 2016 and is dedicated to recruiting, training, and funding scientists and healthcare workers who want to run for political office. (One Republican engineer turned businessman won a race in Oklahoma, without support from the PAC.)
"Scientists are essentially problem-solvers," Shaughnessy Naughton, the president of 314 Action, told Business Insider before the election results came in.
Since Congress often wrestles with complex issues like climate change, cybersecurity,Which most republicans have no idea about, being materialistic swamp dwellers,Naughton said she thought the US should put more scientists into the decision-making body.
"Who better to be tackling these issues than scientists?" she said.
