In the US Senate, the senior senator is the one who has served longer than their state’s other senator. They have more influence and benefits, but there is no technical difference. Junior senators use their terms to gain experience, but some have had a significant impact. Experience doesn’t always determine seniority.
In the United States Senate, a senior senator is a senator who has served longer than the other senator from the same state. Because each state sends two senators to the Senate, there are 50 senior senators at any given time, along with 50 junior senators. While there is no technical difference between Senior and Junior Senators, by convention, Senior Senators have much more influence and tend to get more media attention.
If two senators from the same state are elected at the same time, the senator who is sworn in first is considered the senior senator. Most commonly, one senator retires while another remains in service, and the outgoing senator’s replacement becomes the junior senator. As a general rule, senators from the same state work together, because they have similar interests and goals, and a senior senator can mentor his junior counterpart, often preparing the senator for the day he takes up the senior position.
Senior Senators get some special benefits. They can choose Senate benches ahead of their junior counterparts, allowing them to sit closer to the Senate House leader if they choose. They also have preference on committees and may be treated more respectfully by other senators. An older senator tends to have more political clout, especially if he has served several terms and comes from a large state.
Generally, junior senators don’t have much impact on politics, because they don’t have the power and experience to rally support for proposed legislation; instead, they use their Junior terms to gain experience and learn about how the Senate works. There are some exceptions; Joesph McCarthy, for example, was a junior senator who ended up having a huge impact on the Senate, as was Lyndon B. Johnson, who later became President of the United States.
While senior senators are often more experienced than junior senators, by virtue of their longer terms in the Senate, this is not always the case. A junior senator could have worked his way up through a variety of political positions from the local to the national level which provided a great depth of experience in a variety of places. At times, a junior senator is also more in touch with the national electoral college, since the junior senator may have served more recently locally than the senior senator.
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