The Senate looked a little different after a massive blizzard paralyzed Washington over the weekend. When lawmakers came to work on Tuesday, only female senators showed up.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine presided over a largely empty chamber on Tuesday to lead a brief administrative session and formally postpone official Senate business after the storm.
But looking around the chamber, Ms. Murkowski noticed the chamber looked a little different.
“As we convene this morning, you look around the chamber, the presiding officer is female. All of our parliamentarians are female. Our floor managers are female. All of our pages are female,” Ms. Murkowski said in her remarks on the chamber floor, the New York Daily News reported.
“This was not orchestrated in any way shape or form, we came in and looked around and noticed that … something is genuinely different, and something is genuinely fabulous,” she continued. “Perhaps it speaks to the hardiness of women. That put on your boots and put your hat on and get out and slog through the mess that’s out there.”
In a statement to the Daily News, Ms. Collins said the female-dominated sessions was a “phenomenon” and noted that the two senators who came were both from snowy states.
The two senators volunteered to run the short session on Tuesday. Congress was closed on Monday due to the blizzard that dumped nearly 2 feet of snow in Washington, and slow road cleanup left much of the city crippled for the rest of the week.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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