SEATTLE — It was 2009, floods had inundated western Washington and the state’s politicians were flown up to survey the damage. When asked who would scoot down to the open end of the C-17 cargo plane, where they would have to be tethered down for safety, Gov. Christine Gregoire and Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray volunteered.

As Ms. Cantwell tells it, the men declined.

“Everybody thinks that the macho men would do that,” Ms. Cantwell said. “But it was the three of us willing to go back there.”

For Ms. Cantwell, who has a photograph of that moment hanging in her lobby, the story speaks to the last eight years, the only time in the country’s history when a state’s governor and two senators have all been women. That time ends in January, as Ms. Gregoire will not seek a third term, and both the Republican and the Democrat vying to succeed her are men.