WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than half of all Americans alive today were not yet born when Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio entered Congress.

In January, the Democrat from Toledo will become the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress, after winning her 21st term this month.

“People see results, and we’re there to serve,” Kaptur told Spectrum News in a recent interview on Capitol Hill.

She said that’s why the people of Northwest Ohio have kept her in Congress for the last four decades.

Kaptur was first elected in 1982 when Ronald Reagan was president and gas averaged $1.22 a gallon. She was 36-years-old. 

When the 118th Congress is sworn in Jan. 3, Kaptur will start her 40th year in office and assume the title of the longest-serving woman in the history of the U.S. House and Senate, surpassing former Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who has held the title since 2012.

“For me personally, being an Ohioan it means that even though we don’t have as many votes as California, right, which has 50-sum members of Congress, we only have 15, that Ohio rings in through perseverance,” Kaptur said.

Kaptur’s own perseverance was on display during this election cycle.

She faced one of the toughest races of her career after Republican state lawmakers redrew her district. 

It went from being a very blue district to a slightly red district that former President Donald Trump won by three points in 2020.

Kaptur faced Republican J.R. Majewski, who campaigned on Trump’s endorsement while labeling her a career politician.

Majewski embraced conspiracy theories and defended being outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6th attack, but his campaign lost momentum when The Associated Press reported he had misrepresented his military service.

Kaptur called him an extremist, campaigned on her policy record, and ended up winning by 13 points.

“Find the big middle that’s able to govern,” Kaptur said. “I think that’s what the public voted on this year. If you really look across the country, the extremists—a lot of them were rejected.”

The 76-year-old returns to Capitol Hill with a list of priorities she has long held, including using her role as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee to keep securing taxpayer dollars for her district, fighting for the Great Lakes that she has always lived by, and hoping her decades in office elevate the Midwest when most congressional leadership hails from the coasts.

“Our people serve the public and it is an endurance contest here in some ways,” Kaptur told Spectrum News. “That in order to achieve for our region, we have to try harder and we have to stay longer because we simply don’t have as many votes as the other states.”

Beginning in January, no woman will have stayed longer in Congress than Marcy Kaptur.