Recent congressional elections have been turbulent for women candidates. Many analysts viewed the 2012 election as a major achievement for women's progress in politics, as the campaign ended with a record twenty women serving in the U.S. Senate. Headlines such as this one in the Christian Science Monitor were common: “Election 2012 results: Women to reach landmark – 20 percent of senators.” The new crop of women senators was headlined by Democrat Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, who had become a national figure speaking out on the excessive influence of big banks. Warren defeated incumbent Republican Scott Brown, who had defeated another woman, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, to win his seat in a 2010 special election. Even Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota surprised the political establishment by winning her open-seat contest against Republican Scott Berg. Women's success in running for the U.S. Senate came during an election in which women voters and women's issues were at the heart of the discourse in the presidential race. Ironically, women's greatest gains in the Senate came in an electoral environment in which Democrats were accusing Republicans of engaging in a “war on women” by repeatedly advocating what the Democrats considered to be draconian policies on reproductive rights.