a gay man won a senate seat for the first time ever. the pediatrician trump called a slur won hers. we're unwell.

Chris Pappas, official House portrait. Photo: United States Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

via the AP, The Boston Globe, WBTV, TIME, PinkNews and KJZZ

Two hundred and thirty-seven years. That is how long the United States Senate has existed without an openly gay man ever winning a seat in it. On Tuesday night, Chris Pappas ended that streak in New Hampshire.

Pappas, the Democratic congressman, beat former Republican Sen. John E. Sununu for the seat Jeanne Shaheen is giving up, the AP reported, and The Boston Globe called him the first openly gay man elected to the Senate in American history. (Tammy Baldwin got there first as an out lesbian in 2012, so: first gay man, not first gay senator. The corrections in the replies were very fast and very correct.) He told supporters the win was a "victory for Team New Hampshire over the broken status quo." He is married to Vann Bentley, a lawyer; they wed in 2023.

the pediatrician won too

South Carolina went second. The AP called the Senate race for Annie Andrews, the Charleston pediatrician, at 10:39 p.m., with Andrews at 50.6 percent to Sen. Darline Graham's 47.2, WBTV reported. Graham, the late Lindsey Graham's sister, was appointed to his seat in July and had Trump's endorsement. TIME notes Andrews is the first woman South Carolina has elected to the Senate.

If her name rings a bell, it is because this campaign spent October calling her an anti-trans slur. Trump coined it on Truth Social, and we watched Tim Scott repeat it on live television and credit Trump for it. A Republican governor and the Democrat who beat him in 1998 cut a buddy ad for her anyway. In her statement after the call, Andrews said South Carolina had shown the nation "that we will not bow down," adding, "We will not back down. And we will chart our own course."

what passed on the ballot

Virginia voted to scrub its 2006 same-sex marriage ban out of its constitution. Question 2 was running at roughly 57 percent with more than 95 percent counted, per Decision Desk HQ figures PinkNews reported and NBC Washington's results. A pastor has already sued to void it, which we covered when he filed. "At long last, one more relic of past discrimination is being wiped from the lawbooks," said Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson.

Not everything went our way. Arizona voters approved Proposition 318, which restricts transgender students in school sports and in bathrooms and locker rooms, 58.9 to 41.1 percent in unofficial returns, KJZZ reported; the Arizona Daily Star has the sports half. Gov. Katie Hobbs had vetoed similar bills three years running. The voters went around her.

the rest of the night

Sarah McBride, the first out trans member of Congress, won reelection in Delaware, and Allison Montgomery won a state House seat in Alabama, 53 to 47 with more than 95 percent counted, which makes her the state's first out transgender legislator, according to Out and GLAAD. GLAAD counted more than $187 million in anti-trans campaign ads this cycle, $78 million of it in Texas alone. That is a lot of money to spend on the people who just got a senator.