America is getting more and more diverse — for instance, our Hispanic population grew by 43 percent in the past decade alone — but you’d never be able to tell it by looking at our Congress. Here’s what the House and Senate look like today, alongside what they would look like if they were demographically representative of our nation. Spoiler alert: There’s not a lot of color on the Hill.
They left out the gay demographic — probably because of the over-representation of Republican closet cases. The latest guesstimate is that 3.5 percent of Americans are gay. If that is accurate, then there should be 18 gay members of Congress.
There are at least two out Democrats in the House, of course — Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. The good news is Baldwin is considering running for Wisconsin’s open U.S. Senate seat next year. She would be the first openly gay senator, with the arguable exception of Pres. James Buchanan’s life companion Rufus King, the first U.S. senator from Alabama and later 13th vice president of the United States, who was known as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy” among his peers.
The bad news if Baldwin runs is that it could put her in a primary against former Sen. Russ Feingold, who was ousted in the tea bagger wave last year.
