Beyond Obama: Democratic Women Make Big Gains in Congress

There's plenty of hoopla surrounding the election of Barack Obama, of course, but the little-noticed fact of yesterday's election was the large number of Congressional seats going to women. 

Courtesy of our friends at Slate, we see that new women legislators will be representing districts in Florida, Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, and Maine.

Then there's North Carolina, which elected its first female governor, Beverly Perdue, and replaced Sen. Elizabeth Dole with Kay Hagan.

The North Carolina political battle, you may recall, featured the season's dirtiest ad, one in which the Dole camp tried to paint Hagan as an atheist and even included a woman's voice (but not Hagan's) saying, "There is no God." 

To their credit, the voters of North Carolina rejected Dole and her dirty tricks campaign.