POLITICO Illustration/AP Photos Democrats' election consolation: 4 new female senators The party looks to Kamala Harris, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Duckworth and Maggie Hassan to help lead it out of the abyss.

Democrats still in despair after their electoral drubbing have at least this to look forward to: an influx of female freshmen senators with the potential, party insiders hope, to become breakout stars and leaders of an eventual comeback.

The next Congress will have a record high 21 female senators, 16 of them Democrats, including a quartet of newcomers whose campaigns rarely passed up the chance to throw elbows at President-elect Donald Trump.


They include the Senate’s soon-to-be first Indian-American female member, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who’s promising to challenge Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda and is already generating buzz as a potential 2020 presidential contender; and the chamber’s first Latina, Catherine Cortez Masto, the former attorney general of Nevada.

Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who was born in Thailand, and New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire round out the foursome. They both unseated Republican incumbents with a less fiery resistance to Trump and criticism of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that could position them as effective economic messengers for the caucus.

Harris and Cortez Masto have vowed to safeguard immigrants in their diverse states against any GOP effort to roll back President Barack Obama’s executive actions sparing millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Harris snapped a selfie with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren after a meeting to discuss “how we could work together,” positioning herself in the camp of the liberal icon who has seized the post-election spotlight by aggressively challenging Trump.

Harris pointedly held her first news event after the election at the offices of an immigrant-rights group. The 52-year-old, a daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, told those threatened by Trump’s promises of a border wall and deportation force that “you are not alone, you matter, and we’ve got your back.”

Harris also filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission this month to open a leadership PAC dubbed Fearless for the People, after her campaign slogan. She made her legal achievements a campaign centerpiece, particularly her role in a 2012 settlement that won $20 billion for Californians hurt by foreclosures during the financial crisis.

Cortez Masto claimed the mantle of the retiring Democratic leader she’ll succeed, Harry Reid, by vowing on election night to be “one hell of a check on Donald Trump.”

Spokesman Reynaldo Benitez said by email that Cortez Masto “will do everything in her power to keep immigrant families together and protect important programs like [Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], and will be a strong voice against hate and racism.”

Other priorities for the 52-year-old Nevada freshman include infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, equal pay for female workers, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and defending “Planned Parenthood and access to women’s health services,” Benitez said.

Duckworth, who served two terms in the House before defeating Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), needled Trump during a prime-time speech at the Democratic convention in July. She rapped Trump again after the New York developer, who received five draft deferments during the war in Vietnam, accepted what he called a “much easier” gift of the Purple Heart from a supporter during the campaign. Duckworth, 48, received a Purple Heart after losing her legs during service in the Iraq War.

But Duckworth offered a tempered response after Trump’s stunning defeat of Clinton. “As senator, I plan to start off assuming that those on the other side of the aisle love this country as much as I do,” she tweeted.

“When we agree, I’ll work with them on policies that will help this nation,” Duckworth added. “But when we disagree, I will stand up and fight for working people.”

Raised by a Thai-Chinese mother and an American father who worked on refugee aid for the United Nations, Duckworth supported acceptance of more Syrian refugees in the U.S. even as Kirk sided with Trump in calling for a temporary halt to resettlement. She campaigned with Warren in April and has partnered with the Massachusetts Democrat on a proposal to pad Social Security benefits by ending a corporate tax break.

Beyond retirement security, her spokesman Ben Garmisa added, Duckworth’s early priorities include protecting veterans’ benefits as well as “smart investments in American infrastructure, manufacturing and 21st century energy.”

Duckworth opened a leadership PAC in 2013, though its only contribution to a fellow Democrat during the current election went to the failed Senate bid of Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.), according to FEC disclosures.

Among the four female freshman Democratic senators, the same number the caucus welcomed in 2012 and 1992’s vaunted “year of the woman,” Hassan won her seat by the narrowest margin in a bitter contest marked by nearly $100 million in spending. Fewer than 750 votes out of more than 700,000 cast separated her from Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), who struggled throughout the campaign to carve out distance from Trump in a state that he ended up losing by less than a half-percentage point.

Hassan, 58, mounted her first campaign for state legislature in 2002, before Harris first ran for San Francisco district attorney and before Duckworth’s first congressional bid. She carried a strong economic record as governor into her challenge of Ayotte and won the support of gun-control groups, but Hassan frustrated liberals last year by endorsing a temporary moratorium on Syrian refugee resettlement.

Unlike Harris and Cortez Masto, Hassan steered clear of hitting Trump on social media even as fellow Democrats banded together against the president-elect’s appointment of Steve Bannon as a senior adviser.

“I am sure I can find common ground with members of the other party in the Senate as well as President Trump,’’ Hassan told The Associated Press this month. ‘‘But I also won’t refrain from standing up to President Trump if I need to, because that’s what the people of this state also sent me to do — to fight for their values and their priorities.’’

In a statement to Politico, Hassan identified emergency funding for opioid abuse, action on climate change, and “cutting red tape and providing tax benefits for small businesses” as among her top priorities.

