HISTORIC WIN FOR KLOBUCHAR

Minnesota elects first female governor

Klobuchar joins Georgia's Keisha Bottoms and Ohio's Amy Acton in historic wins for women; first women elected as governors in other states was in 1925

Data from Pew Research Center

Fifteen states have never had a woman senator. Two of those states had a woman on the ballot in this year’s general election but they did not win: Alani Bankhead and N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas were Democratic U.S. Senate nominees in Montana and Oklahoma, respectively. Four states have not had a woman senator or a woman governor: Colorado, Idaho, Indiana and Pennsylvania. However, every state has sent at least one woman to Congress — either the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate. The last to do so was Vermont, which elected a woman to Congress for the first time in 2022. Data from Pew Research Center

Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2026 11:47 am

FIRSTS OF NOTE

• Keisha Bottoms of Georgia, first Black woman governor in U.S. History

• Deb Haaland of New Mexico, first Indigenous governor in U.S. history

• Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, first Indigenous woman U.S Senator

• Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, first openly gay U.S. senator

• Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, first Muslim U.S. senator

• Gina Hinojosa, first Mexican American governor of Texas

• Amy Acton, first woman governor and first Jewish governor of Ohio

• David Crowley, first Black governor of Wisconsin

• Xavier Becerra, first Latino governor of California

• Byron Donalds, first Black governor of Florida

• Claire Valdez, first Native American woman U.S. Representative from New York

• Adrienne Adams, first Black woman Lieutenant Governor of New York

• Annie Adams first woman from South Carolina to be elected to U.S. Senate

By Tesha M. Christensen

Minnesota elected its first female governor yesterday. Longtime national politician Amy Klobuchar (whose father Jim Klobuchar was a columnist for the Star Tribune) swept to victory with 55.5% of the vote. Leading up to the 2026 election, there were 17 states in America that had never had a female governor.

The list of those who have never had female governors are: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Ohio had technically had a female governor – Nancy Hollister, who served on an interim basis for less than two weeks after then-Gov. George Voinovich resigned on New Year’s Eve 1998 following his successful Senate campaign. But this year, Democrat Amy Acton became the first elected woman governor there. Also elected last night was Keisha Bottoms as Governor in Georgia, and she is also the first black woman governor in U.S. history.

Arizona has elected five women as governor, and New Hampshire has elected four. Twenty states have elected one woman as governor, nine have elected two women, and two have elected three women.

MORE DATA FROM THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER AS OF OCTOBER 2026:

•Today, women hold the office of governor in 14 of the 50 states. Ten are Democrats and four are Republicans.

• Five current women governors are their state’s first: Democrats Janet Mills of Maine, Kathy Hochul of New York and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia; and Republicans Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas and Kim Reynolds of Iowa. Hochul and Sanders was reelected on Nov. 3, 2026, while Mills (who is term-limited) and Reynolds (who is not seeking reelection) are departing.
• Overall, 53 women have held governorships in 33 states since 1925, when two women took the oath of office for the first time.
• Arizona has had five women governors since 1988, by far the most of any state. In fact, three women served consecutively over nearly two decades, from the swearing-in of Republican Jane Hull in 1997 until Republican Jan Brewer left office in 2015.