Lisa Blunt Rochester

Lisa Blunt Rochester assumed office as a Delaware senator on January 3, 2025. From 2017-2025, she served as the U.S. representative for Delaware's at-large congressional district., the first woman and first African American to represent Delaware in Congress. Elected at the same time, Blunt Rochester and Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks are only the third and fourth Black women elected to the U.S. Senate and the first two to serve concurrently. (Carol Mosely Braun was elected to the Senate in 1992 and served until 1999. Kamala Harris was elected in 2016 and served until 2021. Laphonza Butler was appointed to the Senate in 2023 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dianne Feinstein and served through 2024.) During her 2017 swearing-in, Blunt Rochester carried a scarf imprinted with the Reconstruction Era voter registration card of her great-great-great-grandfather, who had been a slave.

Blunt Rochester was born on February 10, 1962, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. She received her bachelor's degree in international relations from Fairleigh Dickinson University and her master's degree in urban affairs and public policy from the University of Delaware.

After interning for U.S. Rep. Tom Carper in 1989, Blunt Rochester worked for him as a constituent relations caseworker and on his transition team when he was elected governor of Delaware. Carper appointed her deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services in 1993 and secretary of the Department of Labor in 1998. In 2001, Governor Ruth Ann Minner named Blunt Rochester the state personnel director. In 2004, she left public service to become CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League. She also later served as the senior executive leadership and systems manager for the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

During Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, Blunt Rochester served as one of the campaign co-chairs and as a member of the vetting committee for the vice presidential candidate selection.

For information on Blunt Rochester's policy subject areas, committee appointments and sponsored/co-sponsored legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, please visit her profile on https://www.congress.gov.

Sources:

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. (n.d.). Blunt Rochester, Lisa. Retrieved on Dec. 21, 2022, from https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B001303.

U.S. Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester. (n.d.) Biography. Retrieved on Dec. 21, 2022, from https://bluntrochester.house.gov/biography.

Ballotpedia. (n.d.). Lisa Blunt Rochester. Retrieved on Dec. 21, 2022, from https://ballotpedia.org/Lisa_Blunt_Rochester.