How Will the 2016 Election Affect Black Representation In Congress?

Overview:  There are currently 2 black US Senators and 46 black Members of Congress.  At this point it looks certain there will be one less black representative as Charles Rangel's replacement is likely to be Dominican Adriano Espaillat.  (I've not seen him identified as black.)  Where other black representatives are not running in the general election, their successors appear likely to be African-American.  One iffy black incumbent is Texas district 23 Republican William Hurd.
Kamala Harris is likely to be the third African-American in the US Senate (also she'll be the first Indian-American Senator.) That would be the most black Senators in the Senate at once. Robert 'Bobby' Scott of Virginia is hoping to be appointed to the Senate if Tim Kaine becomes Vice President.  If that happens he'd be the fourth African-American US Senator in the next Congress.  But then his House seat will be open.
[*UPDATE Nov 9, 2016 - I've found two more new African-American candidates for Congress and they have both won:  Florida District 10 - Val Demings;  Delaware at-large - Lisa Blunt Rochester.]

Background on this post:  I updated my list of black members of Congress after the 2014 election.  You can see it here.  [There were two corrections necessary after I worked on this post.  I had totally missed one new black member elected in a 75% white district in New Jersey - Barbara Watson Coleman.  I'd also misspelled Marc Veassel in Texas district 33.]

I figured I should get ready for this election to see what changes there might be after this election.  Are there other black candidates running in other districts?  This is always a bit tricky.  As noted above, in 2014 I missed Barbara Watson Coleman, though I did manage to find a few other new ones who were not in mostly black districts.  This year I was only able, so far, to come up with one African-American candidate not from a seat already held by an African-American:   Kamala Harris is running for US Senate from California.   But what about others?  If you know of any I missed, please let me know.  My email is in the right column above the blog archive.

[Note on racial identity:  I'd note that these posts give me some discomfort because of the emphasis on race.  This is a socially constructed idea that sometimes becomes tricky.  Often identifying a person's race is arbitrary.   I try to utilize the identifiers the candidates themselves use, or look for other indicators that someone has self identified as African-American or black.  For instance,  Wikipedia tells us about Kamala Harris

"Harris is the first female,[4] the first African-American,[5][6][7][8][9] and the first Indian-American attorney general in California.[10][11]"

But for the Democratic candidate in Harlem who is expected to replace Charles Rangel, I can only find reference to him being 'Dominican' and 'Latino.'

For political reasons, it is still relevant to have these categories, and groups like the Congressional Black Caucus are significant.  But it is also instructive to look at women in Congress, Hispanics/Latinos, and other ethnicities.  I'll leave those to others to do.  My posts on this subject came about in 2008 when I could not find a clear list of black members of Congress and ended up creating one.  That left me with the task of updating the list every election.]

There are some changes we know about already:

New York 

Charles Rangel is NOT running for reelection in New York's 13th district.
The Democrat running to replace him is Adriano Espaillat, who would be, if elected, according to Wikipedia, the first Dominican Member of Congress.  There's a  Republican candidate, Tony Smith, and a Green and a Transparent Government Party candidate.

Florida 

Rep. Corrine Brown from Florida's 5th district lost the Democratic primary to state senator Al Lawson after  a 24 count federal indictment.  This means the loss of one woman member of Congress, but a Lawson win would maintain this as a black seat.

Maryland 

Rep. Donna Edwards from Maryland's 4th district ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate seat vacated by Barbara Mikulski.  That means one less woman in the Senate (Mikulski) and one less woman in the House (Edwards).
Anthony Brown is the Democratic candidate hoping to take Edwards' House seat.  His bio says he was the first African-American student body president in his high school.


Pennsylvania

District 2  Chaka Fattah was convicted on 22 counts of corruption in July 2016 and resigned from Congress.  He had already lost in the April primary to Dwight Evans (also African-American.)


California

Democrat Kamala Harris is the front runner in the race for US Senate.  Her father, a university professor, was from Jamaica and her mother was a medical doctor from India.  Politico touts this race (under California's relatively new all candidate primaries where the top two run in the general regardless of party) as historic.  Kamala Harris' opponent is Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

"The election of either would be a historic first: Harris would be the first biracial woman and first Indian-American woman in the U.S. Senate; Sanchez would be the first Latina."

I guess since there has already been an African-American woman in the Senate, that aspect wasn't mentioned.


Virginia

Robert Scott from Virginia's 3rd district is hoping to be appointed US Senator if Virginia's current Senator Tim Kaine is elected Vice President of the US.


Below is from my list of black Members of Congress from 2014.  Most are from pretty safe districts. I've commented on some of the races and others just have links, mostly to Ballotpedia, which, since 2014, seems to have garnered all the top spots on Google for people looking up congressional elections.


Alabama

 District 7 Rep. Terri Sewell is the only candidate in November.

District 13 Rep.  Barbara Lee   got 90% in the primary (in California now all parties are on one primary ballot and the top two go to the primary.)

California

Rep. Karen Bass in California's 37th district got 80% in the primary and will run against the Democratic runner up Chris Wiggins.

Rep. Maxine Waters in Calfornia's 43rd district got 73% of the vote in the primary against her Republican opponent.

Deleware

[UPDATE Nov 9, 2016:  District-at-Large Lisa Bluint Rochester* won]

Florida

District 5  Al Lawson

[UPDATE Nov 9, 2016:  District 10 Val Demings (D)* won this seat with 65% of the vote.]

District 20 Alcee Hastings

District 24, Frederica Wilson is running unopposed.


District of Columbia

Eleanor Holmes Norton


Georgia

District 2 Sanford Bishop

District 4 Hank Johnson

District 5 John Lewis

District 13 David Scott running unopposed.

All the Georgia races at one link.


Illinois

District 1 Bobby Rush won the Democratic primary with 73% of the vote and over 100,000 more votes than his Republican opponent got in his primary.

District 2 Robin Kelly also got over 70% in primary.

District 7 Danny Davis is running against long shot Republican Jeffrey Leef whose unusual road to the ballot got Tribune coverage.


Indiana

District 7 Andre Carson got more than twice the votes in his primary than his Republican opponent got in hers.


Louisiana

District 2 Cedric Richmond is running against three other Democrats and a Libertarian.  (Louisiana  will have a runoff in December if no one gets 50% or more.)


Maryland

District 4 - see above discussion of Donna Edwards running (and losing) in the Democratic primary for US Senate.

District 7 Elija Cummings got 13 times as many votes in the Democratic primary than his opponent got in the Republican primary.


Michigan

District 13 John Conyers

District 14 - after redistricting there were two Democratic Members of Congress in this district. African-American/Bangladeshi Hansen Clarke was pitted against white Gary Peters in 2012.  Peters won.  In 2014, Peters ran successfully for the US Senate and was replaced in the House by African-American Brenda Lawrence who defeated Clarke in the 2014 Democratic primary.


Minnesota

District 5 Keith Ellison -


Missouri

District 1  Wm. Lacy Clay

District 5 Emanuel Cleaver II


Mississippi

District 2 Bernie Thompson


New Jersey

District 10 Donald Payne   It appears there were no opponents in the primaries. 5% of the district is Republican.

District 12 Bonnie Watson Coleman was the first African-American to win this district in 2014.  This district is 75% white, but leans Democratic.


Nevada

District 4 Black Rep. Steven Horsford lost his 2014 reelection bid to the Republican Cresent Hardy.  The Democratic candidate this year, Ruben Kihuen was born in Mexico and faces Hardy.


New York

District 5 Gregory Meeks

District 8 Hakeem Jeffries  Appears unopposed in primary, no Republican candidates, one Conservative.

District 9 Yvette Clarke

District 13 Charles Rangel - retiring - discussed above.


North Carolina

The two black districts in North Carolina (1 and 12) were subject to gerrymandering and ordered to be redrawn.

District 1 G.K. Butterfield - 

District 12  Alma Adams (who was first elected in a special election in 2014 to replace Rep. Melvin Watts who was appointed Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.)


Ohio

District 3 Joyce Beatty

District 11 Marcia Fudge


Pennsylvania

District 2  Chaka Fattah was convicted on 22 counts of corruption in July 2016 and resigned from Congress.  He had already lost in the April primary to Dwight Evans (also African-American)


South Carolina

District 6  James Clyburn


Texas

District 9  Al Green

District 18  Sheila Jackson Lee

District 23  William Hurd's (R) Democratic opponent Pete Gallego got more votes in his primary than Hurd got in the Republican primary. Gallego won this seat in 2012 but was defeated by Hurd in 2014.  This race is rated as a tossup, though the district is 55% Hispanic and  Wikipedia says:

"In the Texas House, Gallego served on the board of directors of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), and four terms as Chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC), a caucus of Texas representatives who are of Mexican-American descent or who serve a significant Mexican-American constituency."

District 30  Eddie Bernice Johnson

District 33  Marc Veasey


Utah 

District 4 Mia Love (R)  The district is 84% white, 2% black, 15% Hispanic.  Love is the first Haitian American Member of Congress and the first black Republican woman in Congress.


Virginia

District 3  Bobby Scott  - see note above about him hoping to be appointed to US Senate if Kaine becomes vice president.


Virgin Islands

Long-time Virgin Islands delegate to Congress Donna Christensen ran unsuccessfully for governor of the Virgin Islands in 2014.  Stacy Plaskett was elected to replace Christiansen as the Virgin Island's delegate to Congress in 2014.


Wisconsin

District 4  Gwen Moore

How Many Blacks In the 114th Congress?

My first post on this topic came out of frustration that I couldn't easily find the answer. It's sort of easier now, but not really. In any case I've found it necessary to keep updating this information - particularly after an election. From what I can tell, checking the districts of the current Black Congress Members and searching for new ones, the 114th Congress, that begins its two year term next January, will have 45 Black Congress Members.  That's two more than the 113th Congress and includes the first Republican black woman (from Utah).  There will also be two Black Senators - one Republican and one Democrat.  You can find more on Black Senators in the previous post.

This post updates the table I put together after the 2012 election which you can find here.

I've tried to keep some of notes on changes in people between 2012 and now - in some cases people were appointed or elected to fill the terms of members who left between sessions such as Melvin Watt who resigned to become the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The chart is in alphabetical order by states.  [This chart was updated Nov 7, 2016 to:
1.  add New Jersey District 12 Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman originally overlooked because she was a new African-American represented from a district that was 75% white
2.  corrected spelling of Rep. Marc Veassey in Texas 33rd.]

Black Congress 2014 NovemberUpdated by Steve on Scribd

This is an update of previous lists that I put together when I couldn't find an up-to-date list of Black Members of Congress.  You can get a list of earlier posts here.  Please email me any errors or omissions. Email link in right column above blog archive.  Thanks.




I checked the numbers with the LA Times election results page which is very quick and very easy to use.  I used other sites to get the Washington DC election results. and the
Virgin Island election results.

South Carolina Race- Second Time Two African-Americans Compete For US Senate Seat

Senator Tim Scott was appointed to the US Senate in December 2012 until the November 2014 election to fill the position after Jim DeMint resigned.  This week he was elected to finish the last two years of DeMint's original term. (So there were two US Senate races in South Carolina this year.) Scott, the first African-American to represent South Carolina in the US Senate, defeated Democrat Joyce Dickerson, also an African-American, to become the first elected African-American from South Carolina.  This got me thinking about whether there had been a US Senate race where two African-Americans were the candidates.  It turns out there was one before as people in Illinois will surely remember.

There have only been nine African-American US Senators, beginning with two from Mississippi - Hiram Rhodes Revels and Blanche Bruce.  Both were Republicans, the party of Lincoln. They were both appointed by the Mississippi State Legislature.  (US Senators were not directly elected by the voters until after the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913.)


In 1966 Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke became the first African-American to be elected to the Senate.

In 1992 Carol Moseley Braun, Democrat in Illinois, became the second to be elected to, and the first woman African-American in, the Senate.

In 2002 Democrat Barack Obama defeated Republican and also African-American Alan Keyes.  Yes, this was the first time two African-Americans ran for the US Senate against each other.

When Obama was elected President, another African-American, Roland Burris, was appointed to finish his term.

Then came the appointment of Tim Scott to replace DeMint followed by the appointment of Mo Cowan of Massachusetts to replace John Kerry when he was appointed Secretary of State.

Finally, Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, was elected in a special election to fill the vacancy after Senator Frank R. Lautenberg's death.  Booker was reelected in this week's election.

So, a total of nine black US Senators.  Of those,

• two were appointed by the Mississippi state legislature
• three were appointed, one of those going on to get elected for another term (Scott)
• four elected to office the first time

A sidenote to the unexpected Democratic loss of the Maryland governorship is that the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, is African-American.  You can get more on that story here.


The outlines of this post come from a Wikipedia List of African-Americans in The US Senate, which also puts these numbers into context:

"As of 2014, there have been 1,950 members of the United States Senate, but only nine have been African American."

That Wikipedia entry also had a strange side note of sorts about P.B.S. Pinckback titled:

"African Americans elected to the U.S. Senate, but not seated"

It doesn't say anything more about how that happened, but there are footnotes. 

Google turns up almost nothing on Pinchback.  A footnote in the Wikipedia piece leads to an essay on Black politicians and the post civil war South from the US House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives pages that probably offers the most meat.  Here's most of what they say about Pinchback:

"In a unique case of double contested elections, African-American Pinckney B. S. Pinchback of Louisiana was elected simultaneously to both the Senate and House. Pinchback lost the contested House seat and, citing claims of fraud in the state legislature, the Senate denied him his seat as well. Serving as provisional governor of Louisiana at the time, Pinchback signed his own election certifications."

 I suspect that Pinchback would make a great doctoral dissertation and/or book.


For people wondering how I got into this, I'm updating my older posts on Blacks in Congress to reflect this week's election.  This is one of the sidebars that's delaying posting that one. 

There Are Now Two African-American US Senators

African-Americans make up about 13% of the US population and with today's election of Cory Booker as the new US Senator from New Jersey, their number and percentage in the US Senate has doubled from one to two.


 On this apparently final day of the current round of budget and debt crisis brinkmanship, engineered by, it would seem, the likes of the Koch brothers, their fellow plotters, and their followers (witting or unwitting), it would seem that the election should tell us something about voters' reaction to the Congressional bullying. 

Here are the results:

Overall Result*			99.3% Reporting
Candidate	Party	% of Vote	Vote Count
Winner C. Booker	Dem	54.6%	713,594
S Lonegan	GOP	44.3%	579,388

*Data from Politico as of 1:41am ET

Here, based on the New Jersey State website data on voter registration as of September 2013 are the numbers and percentage of registered voters of the main groups.  (There are a number of small parties that have less than 1% of the population and I've left them out.)

Una	Dem	Rep	Total
2,570,260	1,825,751	1,093,836	5,494,230
47%	32%	20%

So, with 99.3% of the voters counted (I'll round that up to 100%) there werre 1,292,982 votes in this race or 23.5% of registered voters.

Almost half (47%) the registered voters in New Jersey are unaffiliated.
32% are Democrats and 20% are registered as Republicans.


We don't know (at least I haven't found it) what percent of each party voted.  Democrats may have stayed home thinking their candidate had it locked.  Tea Party Republicans would likely have tried to get a larger percentage of their members  But these are just  assumptions.

There's too much missing data about who voted to make any generalizations about whether this election was affected by the Congressional nonsense or whether this can tell us what to expect in the 2014 elections.  My guess is that too much can happen between now and November 2014 to prognosticate how the budget/debt ceiling chicken game will affect them or whether this election can tell us anything.

The only thing I can say is that there doesn't seem to be a backlash against the Democrats or against a statewide Black candidate.

If Cory Booker Wins the New Jersey US Senate Seat Tomorrow, He'll Be The Only Current Elected Black US Senator

Barrack Obama was the last elected African-American US Senator.  When he left the Senate in 2009 to become President, there were no African-American US Senators.

South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott, the only Republican African-American member of Congress, was appointed to fill the South Carolina US Senate seat left vacant when Jim DeMint resigned in January 2013 to head the Heritage Institute.  Soon Scott was joined by African-American William "Mo" Cowan of Massachusetts who was appointed as Interim Senator to fill  John Kerry's seat when he became Secretary of State.  It was the first time ever there were two African-American US Senators at the same time.  Cowan did not seek election in special election in June 2013 when Ed Markey was elected and took over Cowan's seat.   Scott's seat will have a special election in 2014.

So, if Booker wins, he will be the second African-American, the only Democratic African-American, and the only elected African-American in the US Senate.

I keep track of these things because several years ago I discovered it was difficult to find out how many African-Americans are in Congress.  At that time I could find a list of all the African-Americans who'd ever been in Congress, but that took a lot of time to sort through to find out who actually was currently in Congress.  It seemed the info I found should be available to others, so I posted it.

Other sources are now more readily available, but I've been trying to keep my list up-to-date.  So when I saw mention that Cory Booker, the Democratic candidate for US Senator in tomorrow's election to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg who died in January, is an African-American, I took notice.

He's running against a Tea Party Republican, Steve Lonegan.  The polls have put Booker well ahead, but a recent poll shows Lonegan gaining some ground.  The Guardian's reporter sees little danger for Booker though. But this is a special election on a Wednesday!  If the Tea Party is able to get all its members out and the overall turnout is very low, who knows what could happen?  But I can't imagine that the Democrats are very aware of that and taking necessary measures.

Booker has a degree from Stanford and a law degree from Yale.  Here's a complete bio.
And here is Lonegan's bio.

Did You Notice There Are Now Two African American US Senators?

For the first time in US history, there are two African-American members of the US Senate at the same time.  These are only the seventh and eighth African-Americans ever to serve in the US Senate. 

Tim Scott (R-NC) was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley to Jim Dement's seat when he quit to run the Heritage Foundation.  He'll serve until a special election in 2014 to fill the remainder of Dement's term. 

William 'Mo' Cowan (D-Mass) was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick as Interim Senator until the June 15, 2013 election to fill the remainder of the term of John Kerry, who recently resigned to become Secretary of State. 

I try to keep up with these details since I first posted about the number of African-Americans in Congress.  I couldn't find the information conveniently formatted, so I made it myself.  Since then I've tried to keep it up-to-date after elections or other changes.  The last post was after the November 2012 elections  which I updated just now to incorporate this information.

This makes 43 black Members of the 435 seat US Congress or a smidgen under 10%, while as a whole African-Americans make up 14% of the US population.  In the 100 seat US Senate, they make up 2%. 

In the House, Robin Kelly won the special election to finish out the term of Illinois Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. who resigned. 



If you read carefully, you should have noticed that both the Black US Senators were appointed by their respective governors, not by the voters of their states, though Massachusetts has elected a Black Senator before: Edward Brooke.

How Many Black Members in the 113th Congress?

The answer appears* to be 43 in the House, down from 44 in the 112th Congress.

The US Senate has one African American - Tim Scott, appointed to the position by South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley after Jim DeMint resigned in January 2013.  He's expected to run in the special election in 2014.  Shortly after Scott was appointed he was joined by African-American William "Mo" Cowan of Massachusetts who was appointed as Interim Senator to fill  John Kerry's seat when he became Secretary of State.  It was the first time ever there were two African-American US Senators at the same time.  Cowan did not seek election in June 2013 when Ed Markey was elected and took over Cowan's seat.  

[**UPDATE NOV 9, 2014:  After the midterm elections it now appears there will be 45 in the House of Representatives and 2 US Senators.  See the new list for the 114th Congress here.]

[**UPDATE OCTOBER 15, 2013:  African American Cory Booker is a candidate in the special election October 16, 2013 in New Jersey to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg who died  in January.  Booker is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state running against Tea Party candidate Steve Lonegan.  One recent poll shows Lonegan gaining ground, but the Guardian sees it as wishful thinking by Republicans.  If Booker wins, he would become the second sitting Black US Senator and the only elected Black US Senator. (Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed.).]

[**UPDATE APRIL 14, 2013:  On March 18, 2013, William “Mo” Cowan (D-Mass.) was appointed to fill Senator John Kerry's seat when he resigned to become Secretary of State.  This is an interim appointment until the June 25 special election.  There are now two African Americans serving in the US Senate for the first time ever.] 


There will be 28[7] men and 15[6] women.  Two members - Eleanor Holmes of Washington DC and Donna M. Christensen of the Virgin Islands are non-voting members.

Six of the 112th's African American House members will not be returning for the 113rd Congress.  Three lost to white candidates after redistricting:

• California's Laura Richardson lost to another Democratic incumbent, Janice Hahn when their districts were merged.
• Florida's Republican Allen West lost to Democrat Patrick Murphy in a close race.
• Michigan's Hansen Clarke lost to another Democratic incumbent, Gary Peters, in the primary in their merged district.

Two were replaced by new African American candidates

• New Jersey's Donald M. Payne died.  His son Donald M. Payne Jr. replaced him.
• New York's Edolphus Towns retired and was replaced by Hakeem Jeffries.

One was reelected and then appointed to the US Senate.

• North [South] Carolina's Tim Scott

There were three new African American members elected from new districts:

• Texas' Marc Veassey. 
• Nevada's first African American member Steven Horsford.
• Ohio's Joyce Beatty.

[UPDATE APRIL 14, 2013:  Rep. Jesse Jackson resigned and was replaced on April 11, 2013 by Robin Kelly.  This doesn't change the number of black members of Congress, but it adds a woman.]

Tim Scott's House seat is now open, but, according to AP's Big Story site, it requires a special election.

With Tim Scott's move to the Senate, there will be no Black Republicans in the House and one in the US Senate.  [UPDATE April 14: two in the Senate with newly appointed Massachusetts Senator William 'Mo' Cowan.]


For details, below is a table I created to show each district, by states. (Alphabetical order by state abbreviations.) I've also included the percentage of the vote each member received in the November 2012 election. I've done this to help people see how districts have been gerrymandered to make these seats safe, as is the case for most districts. In some California districts,  both top candidates were Democrats. I've included % of minor candidates as well so the numbers should be very close to 100%.

You should be able to scroll it and enlarge it in the Scribd format below. 

Black Congress Members Dec. 2012 [Updated April 14, 2013]

This is a follow up to previous posts on this topic which I created when I found that there wasn't an easy way to get a list of Black members of Congress.

Feb. 4, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress?  Original Post

Aug. 20, 2008  NPR Reports Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones Dies of Aneurism

Dec. 1, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress:  Update

Dec. 16, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress Update 

Nov. 4, 2010  How Many Blacks in Congress:  Post Election Update

Source of most election data:

2012 Congressional Election Results  District by district election results

Virgin Islands Results   These tended not to be part of most coverage.

Congressional Black Caucus Members

National Journal New Faces in 113th Congress - It seems I can only get you to the page with all the new members. There you can sort by "minorities" - which will show all the other new members with ethnic identities other than 'white'.  If you click on the individual  faces, you'll get a profile of that member. 


Information on districts where incumbents will not be in 113th:

Hansen Clark Race  On Michigan's 14th District Race

Edolphus Towns  replaced by Hakeem Jeffries

Donald M. Paine - On death of Paine Sr. and replacement by his son

Allen West race - On West's loss.

Tim Scott Senate appointment

Hakeem Jeffries  On Jeffries' replacement of Towns


New Districts:

Steven Horsford in Nevada's 4th District 

Joyce Beatty in Ohio's 3rd District

Marc Veassey in Teaxas' 33rd District



*Finding all the African-American Congress members is not easy.  That's why I posted my first post on this in 2008.  The Congressional Black Caucus website doesn't change it's list until after the new Congress begins.  I used that as the starting point for this list.  Then I checked the election of each of the current members.  But,  finding new members is harder.  I googled different possibilities which picked up Tim Scott, the Republican from South Carolina, did not join the Black Caucus.  When I thought I was done, I found the National Journal's list of the 113th Congress new members which allowed me to sort "Minorities" which yielded Horsford, Beatty, and Veassey.  I hadn't found them because they were from districts that were created after the 2020 Census.  So, I think this is reasonably complete, but if anyone finds someone missing or other errors, please let me know in the comments or  email me.

How Many Blacks in Congress? - Post Election Update

[UPDATE Oct. 17, 2013:  See more recent post with updates.]

A couple of years ago I tried to find out how many African-American Congress members there were and discovered it wasn't easy.  I ended up posting my own chart.  So I figured I needed to do some updating to include changes after the November 2010 election.

I've checked each representative on the list to see how they did in the election.  And I've googled to see if I could discover any new black representatives who may have shown up.  Below is a summary of the changes I could find.  This may not be complete.  I will update the chart and put together a new one later. 

The new total, as best as I can tell, is 40, not counting two non-voting members. 


Basically, most members of the Congressional black caucus were reelected, but there are some changes.

All the seats held by black Democrats were retained by black Democrats.  One previously black Democratic seat was recovered (Louisiana). One black Republican won in a district (South Carolina) of a retiring white Republican and one black Republican won a previously Democratic (and white) seat (Florida.)

If this covers all the Congressional victories by black candidates, there would be a gain of three black members of Congress, from 39  to 42.  The one black Senator, Roland Burris, did not run for reelection, so there will be no black Senators.



Two ran for other offices (and lost)

Artur Davis, gave up his seat in Alabama's 7th district to run for governor.  He lost in the primary to another Democrat.  Terri Sewell won the seat.

Kendrick Meek gave up Florida's 17th district house seat to run for US Senator.  He lost.  His house seat was won by Frederica Wilson. 


One lost the primary election:

Carolyn Cheeks  Kilpatrick  lost her Michigan's 13th district seat in the primary to Hanson Clark, who went on to win the general election.

One did not seek reelection:

Diane Watson in California's 33rd district announced last January she would not run and was replaced by Karen Bass.  

In all the cases above, the individuals changed, but the seats remained Democratic and black.

(The focus here is on the House, but Senator Roland Burris did not run for reelection from Illinois and there will be no new black Senators.)

 

Black Democrat retakes

In 2008, Joseph Cao took advantage of Rep. Jefferson's indictment for bribery to defeat him in Louisiana's heavily black and Democratic 1st district.   He also became the first Vietnamese-American member of Congress.  But in 2010, he lost the seat went back to a black Democrat, Cedric Richmond. 



Two black Republicans elected.

AP reports that 14 black Republicans ran for Congress in 2010 and two were elected. 

Tim Scott won in South Carolina's 1st district.  He defeated Strom Thurmond's son in the primary. He was endorsed by Sarah Palin. 


Allen West ousted a two term Democrat in Florida's 22nd district, which supported Gore, Kerry, and Obama in the last three presidential races. 


An AP report, here from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reports on the election of other non-white candidates in general. such as Nikki Haley, the new Indian-American Governor of South Carolina and also their first female governor.  They also report on Hispanic candidates and voters.

Black Members of House of Representatives 112th Congress

Please
email me with corrections and additions. Thanks.

How many Black Members of Congress? Update

[Updated Dec. 21 2012 - How Many Black Members In 113th Congress?]

[Update Jan. 24, 2009 Thai Time: Roland Burris was appointed Illinois' junior Senator on January 15, 2009 to replace Barrack Obama. The appointment of Burris, an African-American, means that there is still one Black member of the US Senate. (I see that I missed this because it occurred while I was at the Petchabun meeting and out of internet contact for several days.) Today's announcement that Hillary Clinton has been replaced by Kirsten Gillibrand means the number of women in the US Senate stays the same as well.
[Update Dec. 16, 2008: I got through to the Congressional Black Caucus office today to confirm that Donna Christian Christensen, delegate from the Virgin Islands, will return in the 111th Congress and that no new Black representatives were elected from districts that didn't previously have Black representatives. That means that after this election the number of Black members of the US House of Representatives is down by one (William Jefferson lost his election) and the US Senate lost its only Black Senator when Barack Obama was elected President. By my count that means there are 39 African-American members of the US House of Representatives, plus two more African-Americans who are non-voting delegates (from Washington DC and the Virgin Islands).]

[Update Dec. 7, 2008: Black Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was defeated yesterday in his bid for reelection by Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao. That means one less black congress member, but it also means the first Vietnamese-American congress member.]

Short, not completely confirmed answer, is 40 39 [see update on Rep. Jefferson above.] But there are a number of qualifications. Read on for the details.

In February I posted about the difficulty in getting a simple number count of African-American Congress members. I went through several lists and put together a table where I calculated there were 40 voting House members and one US Senator. That Senator resigned recently so he could concentrate on being president-elect and his replacement is still to be appointed.

After the November election, I thought it was time to attempt to update the table. It wasn't easy. The Congressional Black Caucus site, the one I would expect to have the information, still has the 110th Congress listed. That's fine, but it would be nice if they had something about who were reelected or whether there were new members. Maybe that's too political and they wouldn't want to have to mention if someone lost an election.

In any case, I could find that all but two members have been reelected. In a couple of cases the member had died and been replaced by an African-American since I last posted. Stephanie Tubbs Jones was not replaced until after the November 4 election, by a later special election. Her successor - Martha Fudge, also an African-American - was elected to fill in the rest of the term on November 18 as well as starting the full term in January. The exceptions were Donna Christian-Christensen, the non-voting member from the Virgin Islands. I simply couldn't find any information online on that election. The second is Louisiana Congressman Willian Jefferson. Although he's under indictment, that isn't the reason he wasn't reelected. Hurricane Gustav caused the cancellation of the primary in his district. The primary was postponed until the regular election day. Jefferson won the Democratic primary and the final election will be Dec. 6, 2008.

I had to check each candidate's election separately. I used my list of Congress members and relied on Sourcewatch to see if they had been reelected. Sourcewatch had a nice state-by-state breakdown with pictures of all the candidates. I did not, however, go through all states to see if there were any black faces that were new. It was tedious enough as it was and that seemed a dubious task.

They are listed in order of seniority which was how the original encarta list had them.

[Run your cursor over the top tool bar for controls to print, email, magnify the chart, etc.]
Black Members of 111th Congress

Publish at Scribd or explore others: US Federal Government

While searching I found this August 2008 report on from the Congressional Research Service on African-American Congress members. It has more information about each member beginning in 1870.

While double checking that last link, I found another CRS report on the members of Congress dated May 2008 which says of the 110th Congress:

A record number of 90 women serve in the 110th Congress: 74 in the House, 16 in the Senate. There are 42 black or African American Members in the House, including two Delegates, and one black Senator, the same as the record number in the 109th Congress. There are 30 Hispanic or Latino Members serving: 26 in the House, including the Resident Commissioner, and three in the Senate. Eight Members (five Representatives, one Delegate, and two Senators) are Asian or Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander. There is one American Indian (Native American), who serves in the House. This report will be revised at the commencement of the 111th Congress.

[Update: January 30, 2009 Thai Time: Ragini at Just Jackfruit has put together the information I was originally looking for when I found myself having to create this table to figure things out. H[Sh]e gives the percentage of Blacks, Hispanics, Asian Pacific Islanders, and American Indians and Alaskan Natives, as well as women in the US and in Congress.]

NPR reports Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones Dies of [Suffers] [Dies of] an Aneurysm

[Update 11:17am: I don't usually deal with late breaking news and as you can see, I don't do it well. But now there are a reports online such as this updated ABC News report that reports that Congresswoman Jones has passed away.]


On NPR they just announced that Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones just passed away.

[11:07am NPR just had an on-the-hour report that says she is in the hospital with an aneurysm, but alive. I'm not sure why the conflicting reports on the same network.]

I'm checking the internet, I found this report from a couple of hours ago from ABC news when she was reported as 'stabilized.'

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, was hospitalized Tuesday night at the Huron Road Hospital in East Cleveland after suffering an aneurysm while driving her car in Cleveland Heights.
As of noon ET on Tuesday, her condition had "stabilized," according to a statement released by her office.

This is significant to this blog because I have posted about the number of black members of Congress which gets a few hits daily. I put it up when I found no site where I could find a clear, accurate list where I could count how many black members of Congress there are. Trying to keep up to date on that list is not easy. I have added this information, but I'm not sure that there haven't been other additions or deletions since I posted it.

The picture is from About.com which also has a bio on Congresswoman Jones.

Obama or Clinton?

The US voters are making history with the Democrats virtually assured that either a man with African heritage or a woman will be their candidate for president. Tomorrow night is the Democratic caucus in Alaska. From what I hear, there will be a large turnout in Anchorage, possibly even stretching the capacity at Begich Middle School for the Anchorage caucus. But which candidate is the best? I've boiled this down for me to three criteria.



General Electability in November

Are Americans less racist or less sexist? Or put another way, are they more willing to vote for a man with African heritage or a woman? Blacks, with 9% of the seats in the House of Representatives reflect their 13% of the US population much better than do women with 16.1% in the House. But in the Senate, where whole states, not gerrymandered districts ,vote there is only one African-American - Barrack Obama - for 1%. But women have 16% of the 100 seats. That still means 84% men in the Senate and House.


[2/5/08: Added the missing decimal point Ropi pointed out in the comments. This post was postponed because I had trouble finding reliable numbers for blacks in Congress. That story is in the previous post. A good webstie for information on women in politics is Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.]

David Broder has an interesting article on districts where women win.

The scholars could find no significant differences in terms of geography or social characteristics between those districts that elected African American men and African American women. Almost without exception, they were heavily Democratic, urban and working class.

But the picture is very different for white women running for Congress. "Female Democratic House members tend to win election in districts that are more liberal, more urban, more diverse, more educated and much wealthier than those won by male Democratic members of the House," they write. "They come from much more compact, 'tonier,' upscale districts than their male counterparts."

The fact that a woman and a man of African heritage are the finalists for the Democratic nomination says a lot about the changing demographics of the United States. I we are in a period of flux - the old rules are starting to dissolve, but I don’t know that the new rules are in place yet either. Will enough voters ignore gender and race to elect and man of African heritage or a woman as president?

Stand on Key Issues

I don’t think they are too far off on the issues, though Obama focuses on the fact that he never supported going into Iraq and Clinton did. But it isn't simply the issues we face now, but the issues that the President will face once in office - the 9/11's and Hurricane Katrina's that weren't anticipated. Which candidate has the imagination to find better ways to do things?

Ability to get things done

No matter how great their policies are, without the competence to get them through Congress, they have nothing.

Hillary Clinton surely has learned a lot of lessons in the eight years Bill was President. As a former first lady and second term Senator she knows a lot of people both in the US and overseas. Of all these people, how much does she owe them and how much do they owe her? More particularly, which people does she owe? The Clintons also have a high negative rating among a sizable minority of people. This could cause the kind of constant sniping Bill Clinton faced during his eith years. These are people who will always be trouble. On the other hand, Bush has much higher negatives and has managed to get his way a lot of the time.

Barrack Obama has less experience and presumably fewer connections, and fewer people he owes. He is inspirational, but you also need administrative mechanics to make things happen. His campaign shows that he is able to attract competent people to help. Obama is able to articulate people's hopes for a better way. That can be powerful for a while, but then some tangible things need to be achieved.

Either of the two will have to attract competent teams to develop good policies and to get them passed by Congress. It seems to me that Clinton’s strength and weakness here are her connections to the existing power structure. Obama’s strength and weakness are that he has fewer of the ties and can take us in a new direction.

May the best...candidate... win.

How Many Black Congress Members?

[This info was updated Dec. 21 2012 - How Many Black Members In 113th Congress?] 

[Dec. 2, 2008 Update: Here's an update to the chart and this post.]

The quick answer appears to be 40 voting members and 2 non-voting members in the House of Representatives and 1 US Senator (Obama.). But I'm not completely sure.

You'd think this would be easy to find on the web. Someone should have a quck number. David D. Kirkpatrick wrote in December 2005

The number of blacks in Congress has grown to 43 from just 13 at the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969. But although the 2006 election elevated some caucus members to prominence, it did not add to the group's numbers. Its 43 members still make up less than 10 percent of the House and 1 percent of the Senate. By comparison, blacks make up about 13 percent of the population.

Encarta and Wikipedia both have tables of all the Black congress members ever. You have to go through the lists and separate out those whose dates of service (for Wikipedia) end in -present or (for Encarta) - . EthnicMajority has 42, but two are non-voting and one is dead.

But the two lists don't match. Wikipedia has five more people than Encarta. The Congressional Black Caucus website lists 43 people in the Black Caucus, but that includes Senator Obama (the only black Senator), two non-voting members (DC and Virgin Islands), and one deceased whose seat apparently won't be filled until the November 2008 election.

Going through the three lists (Encarta, Wikipedia, Black Caucus) I've come up with a total of 40 black voting members members of Congress. (DC and the Virgin Islands each have one non-voting black member. ) It's quite possible I missed one or added one. I'm not sure quite what it means that this number is not readily available. Below is the chart I came up with.

[August 20, 2008 - Stephanie Tubbs Jones suffered an aneurism and passed away today]