Trivia question: What US state is the only one never to have sent a woman to Congress?
Answer: Vermont.
If asked to guess, it’s a safe bet that few Americans would have put the northern New England state anywhere on their list of possibilities.
After all, Vermont has a reputation as a liberal wonderland. It is the land of socialist Bernie Sanders and progressive Howard Dean. It was the first state to OK same-sex civil unions. It has long allowed legal recreational use of marijuana. A Gallup poll released earlier this year found Vermont was the most liberal state in the country, with Massachusetts coming in second.
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Yet here we are in 2018, and Vermont is in fact the only state that has only ever elected white men to Congress.
That statistic was solidified earlier this month as Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith was appointed by Mississippi’s governor to replace retiring Senator Thad Cochran. With Hyde-Smith’s swearing-in, that state sent its first woman to Congress. (She is seeking election this fall for a full term.) And that left Vermont as the final outlier.
“When I first heard that, I just couldn’t believe it,” said Susan Ouellette, a history professor who researches women in history at St. Michael’s College near Burlington, Vt. “When pressed to think about it, I realized that there hasn’t been much of an opportunity.”
Ouellette doesn’t see sexism as the main reason why Vermont hasn’t elected a woman to Congress. It is more of a factor of political circumstance. With two senators and just one member of the US House of Representatives, there are simply fewer spots than in other states.
Vermont is not the only state with a Washington delegation of just three. Six other states have that distinction, including Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. All but Vermont have elected a woman to Congress. (Of note: Vermont is also one of 22 states that have never elected an African-American to Congress, according to the US House historian.)
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What makes Vermont different is that history has shown that once a man wins that position, he rarely leaves.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy was first elected in 1974 and now, 44 years later, is the longest-serving senator in the nation. Sanders, his Senate colleague, has held his post for 16 years. On the House side, the state’s lone congressman, Peter Welch, has served for a dozen years and doesn’t appear ready to leave anytime soon.
Adding to that, all three incumbents are hugely popular locally. So unless they retire, it is hard to see how any challenge — male or female — would be successful.
This is not to suggest that Vermont never elects women to office, period. The state has seen a woman serve as governor, plus 40 percent of its state legislators are women, tied with Arizona for the highest in the nation, according to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
The lack of representation in Congress is glaring and might not change any time soon, as all three incumbents are preparing to run for reelection. That said, both of the state’s senators are in their 70s, meaning that the long-term forecast is uncertain.
But in the meantime, New Hampshire, Vermont’s next door neighbor, has an entirely female Washington delegation. Might be time to play catch up.
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James Pindell can be reached at james.pindell@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jamespindell or subscribe to his Ground Game newsletter on politics: http://pages.email.bostonglobe.com/GroundGameSignUp