United States of America

The Women's Political Caucus of New Jersey (WPCNJ) congratulates New Jersey's Democratic candidate for governor in 2013, State Senator Barbara Buono, in her choice on SEIU 1199 Vice-President Milly Silva as her running mate. According to Center for Women and Politics(CAWP), New Jersey is only the third state ever to field a two-woman major party ticket in the general election for a state's top elective posts, following examples set by Democrats in Illinois in 1994 and Republicans in Kentucky in 1999.

Women are outnumbered in state legislatures around the country, particularly in Michigan, where female representation is at its lowest point in more than two decades.

As MLive reported Sunday, women inside and outside the state legislature are working to recruit new female candidates. But as of today, women hold only 28 out of 148 seats in the Michigan Legislature. 

Lindy Boggs was only 24 when she arrived in Washington as the top political adviser to her husband, newly elected to Congress.

Thirty-two years later, the seat became hers after Hale Boggs was presumed dead in a plane crash, and she made her own mark as an advocate for women and minorities.

Boggs died Saturday at the age of 97, according to ABC News, where Boggs' daughter Cokie Roberts is a political contributor.

Before Anthony Weiner cannonballed into the 2013 New York City mayoral race, the storyline of the election had been whether mayoral frontrunner and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn would become the city's first female mayor (and its first openly gay mayor to boot).