—Kay Hagan, North Carolina. Hagan, 55, captured a closely contested race against Sen. Elizabeth Dole. She went into banking after earning a law degree. Hagan won a seat in the state Senate 10 years ago, quickly rising to become a chief budget writer. With her influence over state spending, Hagan actively pushed for more funding for education and became one of the most powerful women in Raleigh, rising through leadership usually dominated by men. Her late uncle, Lawton Chiles, was a senator and then governor of Florida.

—Jeff Merkley, Oregon. The 52-year-old Portland Democrat defeated incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith. The first member of his family to go to college, Merkley began a "100 towns for change" tour in June in Myrtle Creek, the southern Oregon timber town where he was born and where his father earned a living as a mill worker. He received a master's degree in public policy from Princeton and a bachelor's degree in international relations from Stanford. In the mid-1980s, Merkley worked as a national security analyst for the Pentagon and the Congressional Budget Office. First elected to the Oregon House in 1998, Merkley served as House minority leader from 2003 to 2006 and was elected speaker in January 2007.

—Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire. The first woman elected governor of her state became its first female senator in her second race against Republican Sen. John Sununu. In 2002 she lost to Sununu by 4 percentage points. Shaheen, 61, won the first of her three two-year terms as governor in 1996. Before that, she had served six years in the state Senate. Before entering politics, she worked as a university administrator, campaign aide, jewelry store owner and teacher.

—Mark Udall. Colorado. Udall, 58, was in the Colorado House for two years and served in the U.S. House for a decade before his election to the Senate. He is expected to concentrate on environmental and energy issues in the Senate, as he did in the House. His father, the late Morris Udall, represented Arizona for three decades in the House. Mark Udall will be joined as a Senate freshman by his cousin, Tom Udall of New Mexico.

—Tom Udall, New Mexico. Udall, 60, succeeds New Mexico's longest-serving senator, Republican Pete Domenici, who announced his retirement after 36 years in the Senate. Udall has spent a decade representating his district in the House after serving as New Mexico's attorney general for seven years. He still wears cowboy boots under his business suits, a habit that reflects his upbringing in a ranching family that once drove cattle across territorial New Mexico. His father is Stewart Udall, a former Arizona congressman and Interior secretary.