When the new crop of 2012 freshmen heads to Capitol Hill next month, Congress will be more its most diverse in history. Among the new senators will be current Wisconsin Rep. Tammy Baldwin, who authored the 2010 Democratic health care law's popular requirement that insurance companies let children stay on their parents' plans until age 26 and who will soon be the Senate's first-ever openly gay member. (This year, Arizona elected the House's first-ever openly bisexual member in Krysten Sinema, and New York also elected its first-ever gay congressman in Sean Patrick Maloney, both Democrats.) Another incoming Senator will be Angus King, Maine's former governor and an independent from a state fond of them; he will caucus with Democrats and hopes to weigh in on campaign finance reform. Massachusetts' newest senator-elect, Elizabeth Warren, who ran 2012's highest-profile Senate campaign, has reforms of her own in mind, as a harsh critic of Wall Street and the architect for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On the other side of the aisle, Texas' Cuban-American Senator-elect Ted Cruz is already making headlines for his vision of economic conservatism and his flat condemnation of Mitt Romney's infamous campaign-trail "47 percent" remarks.
