West Virginia Ready to Elect First Female Senator

The next member of the U.S. Senate from West Virginia will make history as the first woman to represent the state in Congresses upper chamber.

Shelley Moore Capito the GOP Representative and Secretary of State Natalie Tennant a Democrat each were victorious in their respective party primaries on Tuesday.

That has set up a very rare election campaign matchup featuring two women for the seat in the United State Senate.

The election winner in November will succeed Senator Jay Rockefeller a Democrat, who announced his retirement.

Capito has been a member of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill for seven terms. She has been targeted by GOP groups that do not believe she is conservative enough.

However, at this point, she represents one of the best chances for the Republicans to take a seat in the Senate that is held by the Democrats.

Tennant, who is a former reporter on television, had won election statewide on two occasions. Democrats in West Virginia have an advantage in the numbers of voters registered.

This race now becomes just the 13th for the Senate in the history that features two women as nominees from major parties, according to information taken from a University of Minnesota analysis done by Smart Politics.

The first election that had two women in a race for the Senate was in Maine in 1960 between Lucia Cormier a Democrat and Margaret Chase Smith a Republican.

Politics in West Virginia are not defined easily, in part due to it being a small state were politicking at a retail level is critical and most of the voters become known to candidates via meetings held one to one. Relationships between voters and their Congressmen and women are much closer.

In the 2012 Presidential election, Mitt Romney the Republican presidential nominee won the state with over 62% of the vote.

However, the state has a governor who is a Democrat and a legislature that is controlled by the Democrats.