Ella Grasso famously never lost an election and Nov. 5, 1974 was no exception. A true political pioneer, Connecticut’s first woman governor was also the state’s first governor of Italian descent, as well as the first woman elected to lead any U.S. state in her own right (not as successor to her husband).

Amid the post-Watergate Democratic sweep, Grasso easily defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Robert Steele, who attributed his loss to a “National tide,” according to an Associated Press article in the next day’s Morning Record. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine later that month with Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis and Jerry Brown, among a handful of other Democratic victors.