Women Senators Pick Politeness Over Politics

When it comes to civility in the Senate, look to the women to set the tone.
One female senator almost never attacks another, even when they’re on opposite sides of an issue, Politico reports.

There’s an unstated truce between the 17 female senators. Politeness beats out partisanship. The women’s ties are solidified in regular dinners led by the longest-serving female senator, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. When she started the dinner group several years ago, along with Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Mikulski established strict rules: “no staff, no memos, no leaks and no men,” as Politico puts it.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski

“We committed to maintaining a zone of civility here within the institution long before it became the chic thing to do,” Mikulski says.

And while it may be easy to keep the peace among 17 — rather than the 83 men in the Senate — the sisterhood comes into play when the women clash with their male counterparts.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) sided with then-Sen. Blanche Lincoln during a closed-door meeting on banking regulation. “It was about jurisdiction but also about gender,” one observer told POLITICO.