Women make significant gains in Congress

>>> for house and senate seats. the result is in part the highest number of women senators in american history . at least 19, pending results, final results from the north dakota contest. joining me is the chair of the democratic senatorial committee, washington state senator patty murray . congratulations are in order. everyone is saying you recruited the women , a lot of other good candidates, got a lot of luck because a little bit of luck at least because of those two republican male candidates who really offended a lot of people with their comments on rape. but the wins were there for the democrats.

>> well, i think a lot of good things came together and the most important thing is really good people said they would run from joe donnelly in indiana to tim kaine in virginia to all the great women you mentioned including heidi heiden camp who's going to win and what their common base was that they wanted to come together to help our country work, to make sure we move forward in a positive direction and that is a great message out of the wins across the board, is the democratic party has said this country needs to work every step of the way. they do that and we can all move forward.

>> now, when we think back to some of the women 's issues, issues of concern to people with certain values, women and men, when we think back to sarah fluke incident you were directly involved in, not being able to testify to that committee, what foster friess said to me about contraception and putting an aspirin between your legs, there were a series of moments, do you think that had anything to do with your recruitment of these candidates and some of these senate races or was this a larger issue about either the economy or access to health care ? what do you think was driving the races?

>> i think it's a combination of women who are paying attention to whether or not government is going to make critical decisions about their own health care and the economic impact of that. really we saw this begin back months ago, almost at the beginning of the time when the republicans came in to power in the house and the first few bills they put out took away a woman's right to choose. and then when we were trying to put a budget together so government wouldn't shut down boehner said on the table between us and having the government shut down was funding for planned parenthood . he made it a budget decision. that began the awakening amongst women about what was happening in the republican party and i think again that is an issue that the republican party has to look at. we have elected candidates across the board who want to make sure we do focus on jobs and the economy and the critical challenges that we face and aren't going to divert to a social agenda. that's been a strong message out of this campaign is women want to make sure government is working for them.

>> patty murray , thanks for joining us on this day after.