By: History.com Editors

2000

Hillary Clinton is elected to the U.S. Senate

History.com Editors

Published: July 24, 2019

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

On November 7, 2000, Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected to represent New York in the U.S. Senate, becoming the first First Lady to win elected office.

Clinton’s résumé was unique among First Ladies and among senators. After meeting her husband, Bill, at Yale Law School, she spent her early career as an advocate for children’s rights and was named to the board of the Legal Services Corporation. During Bill’s presidency, she took an active role in promoting the administration’s healthcare policy and used her position to bring attention to children’s rights and family law issues. Despite the fact that her husband was currently under impeachment for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, New York Democrats approached Clinton about running for Senate near the end of his term. She announced her candidacy after purchasing property in Chappaqua, New York and waiting for the impeachment proceedings to end.

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Clinton visited every county of New York in an effort to stave off the inevitable charge that she was a “carpetbagger.” Recruited to run in part because her “star power” could counteract that of her presumptive Republican opponent, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Clinton’s chances improved when Giuliani dropped out of the race due to health issues and controversies around the recent dissolution of his marriage. His replacement, Rick Lazio, raised tens of millions of dollars but ultimately garnered only 43 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 55.

Although the news was overshadowed nationally by the presidential election, which was too close to call and would not be decided until December, Clinton’s election received equal billing with the presidential saga on the front page of the New York Times. Though she had been a public, political figure for much of her life, winning a campaign for federal office marked an important moment in her career. After one term in the senate, she would vie for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, fighting a hard but unsuccessful campaign against Barack Obama; afterwards she went on to serve as Obama’s Secretary of State. Clinton ran for president again in the 2016 election, winning the Democratic nomination and becoming the first woman chosen to lead a major U.S. political party. She ultimately won the popular vote but lost the election to Donald Trump, who served one term.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on November 7th

1861

Battle of Belmont, Missouri

On November 7, 1861, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp at the Battle of Belmont, Missouri, but are forced to flee when additional Confederate troops arrive. Although Grant claimed victory, the Union gained no ground and left the Confederates in firm control of that section of the Mississippi River. This engagement […]

1885

Canada’s transcontinental railway completed

At a remote spot called Craigellachie in the mountains of British Columbia, the last spike is driven into Canada’s first transcontinental railway. In 1880, the Canadian government contracted the Canadian Pacific Railroad to construct the first all-Canadian line to the West Coast. During the next five years, the company laid 4,600 kilometers of single track, […]

1914

First issue of “The New Republic” published

While World War I rages in Europe, the first issue of a new magazine, The New Republic, is published in the United States. The New Republic’s editorial board was presided over by the journalist Herbert Croly, author of the influential 1909 book The Promise of American Life. Impressed by Croly’s arguments for greater economic planning, […]

1916

Jeannette Rankin becomes first woman elected to Congress

On November 7, 1916, Montana suffragist Jeannette Rankin is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the first woman in the history of the nation to win a seat in the federal Congress. Born and raised on a ranch near Missoula, Montana, Rankin was the daughter of progressive parents who encouraged her to […]

1932

Supreme Court overturns Scottsboro convictions

On November 7, 1932, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in the matter of Powell v. Alabama. The case arose out of the infamous Scottsboro case. Nine young Black men were arrested and accused of raping two white women on train in Alabama. The boys were fortunate to barely have escaped a lynch mob […]

1940

Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses due to high winds on November 7, 1940. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built in Washington during the 1930s and opened to traffic on July 1, 1940. It spanned the Puget Sound from Gig Harbor to Tacoma, which is 40 miles south of Seattle. The channel is about a mile […]

7th November 1940: Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge, in Puget Sound, Washington, vibrating violently just prior to its collapse due to hurricane winds causing a violent oscillating motion known as 'flutter'.

1943

Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is born

On November 7, 1943, Roberta Joan Anderson—later known to the world as Joni Mitchell—is born in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada. Performing solo with her acoustic guitar and long, straight, blond hair, Mitchell may have looked every bit the folk artist. But the groundbreaking singer-songwriter can better be described by Duke Ellington’s famous superlative: “beyond category.” […]

1944

FDR wins unprecedented fourth term

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains the only president to have served more than two terms.

FDR

1944

Soviet master spy is hanged by the Japanese

On November 7, 1944, Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German Soviet spy, who had used the cover of a German journalist to report on Germany and Japan for the Soviet Union, is hanged by his Japanese captors. Sorge fought in World War I in the German army, and then earned his doctorate in political science at […]

1966

John Lennon and Yoko Ono meet

On November 7, 1966, British rock sensations The Beatles walk into London’s Indica Gallery, where avant-garde Japanese artist Yoko Ono is preparing for the opening of her solo exhibit. Singer and guitarist John Lennon and Ono meet when he asks her about Ono’s intriguing art piece— a ladder topped by a magnifying glass that revealed […]

1972

Nixon re-elected president

Richard Nixon defeats Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) and is re-elected President of the United States. With only 55 percent of the electorate voting, the lowest turnout since 1948, Nixon carried all states but Massachusetts, taking 97 percent of the electoral votes. During the campaign, Nixon pledged to secure “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Aided […]

1980

“King of Cool” Steve McQueen dies

On November 7, 1980, the actor Steve McQueen, one of Hollywood’s leading men of the 1960s and 1970s and the star of such action thrillers as Bullitt and The Great Escape, dies at the age of 50 in Mexico, where he was undergoing an experimental treatment for cancer. In 1979, McQueen had been diagnosed with […]

1989

Two African American firsts in politics

On November 7, 1989, in New York, former Manhattan borough president David Dinkins, a Democrat, is elected New York City’s first African American mayor, while in Virginia, Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder, also a Democrat, becomes the first elected African American state governor in American history. Although Wilder was the first African American to be popularly […]

1991

Magic Johnson announces he is HIV-positive

On November 7, 1991, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson stuns the world by announcing his sudden retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers, after testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, many Americans viewed AIDS as solely a gay white man’s disease. Johnson, who is Black and identifies as heterosexual, was […]

2000

Election results between Al Gore and George Bush too close to call

This date in 2000 was a pivotal moment in U.S. history, as the presidential election results in a statistical tie between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George Bush. The results in Florida were unclear by the end of election night and resulted in a recount and a Supreme Court case, Bush v. Gore, which ended […]

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Citation Information

Article title
Hillary Clinton is elected to the U.S. Senate
Website Name
History
Date Accessed
March 24, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
January 31, 2025
Original Published Date
July 24, 2019

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