Nevada becomes first state in US history with women-majority representation in state legislature

Twenty-three of the 42 available State Assembly seats will now be represented by a woman

Clark Mindock
New York
Wednesday 19 December 2018 00:26 GMT
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Jacky Rosen celebrates with members of her team after winning her US Senate race against Dean Heller in November
Jacky Rosen celebrates with members of her team after winning her US Senate race against Dean Heller in November

Nevada has become the first US state to have a female majority in its legislature.

The appointments of Rochelle Nguyen and Beatrice Angela Duran to the State Assembly by commissioners in Clark County mean that women will now have 23 of the 42 available seats.

Their seats are being vacated by Chris Brooks who is leaving after he was appointed to the state Senate and Olivia Diaz who is is pursuing a city council sat in Las Vegas, The Nevada Independent reported.

With nine of the state’s 21 Senate seats also held by women, it means that 32 of the 63 total seats in the state legislature will be held by a female representative.

It is the first time a state has seen that level of representation in US history.

The 2018 midterm elections saw a record number of women win seats in the US Congress. In Nevada, Democrat Jacky Rosen beat Republican Dean Heller to win a seat in the US Senate.

The appointments in Nevada comes after female representation on state legislative bodies across the country’s 50 states reached 25.3 per cent earlier this year, or 1,866 of the 7,383 available seats.

Prior to the increase in Nevada, Arizona and Vermont both claimed the highest percentage of representation of women in their state legislatures, with 40 per cent of those bodies.

At the start of the year, five states including Nevada had one-third of their legislatures represented in their capitals. Colorado, Washington, Illinois and Maine were the other four.

Katie Ziegler, who runs the National Conference of State Legislatures Women’s Legislative Network, told The Hill website that those states have seen consistent representation, too.

“We’ve seen in those states that have high numbers [of women], they’ve been pretty consistently high for a long time,” she said. “That says that the culture is such that women running is common”.

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