The three classes of United States Senators are currently made up of 33 or 34 Senate seats each. The purpose of the classes is to determine which Senate seats will be up for election in a given year. The three groups are staggered so that one of them is up for election every two years.
A senator's description as junior or senior senator is not related to his or her class. Rather, a state's senior senator is the one with the greater seniority in the Senate. This is mostly based on length of service.
Read more about Classes Of United States Senators: Historical Division, New States, Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, List of Current Senators By Class
Famous quotes containing the words classes of, classes, united, states and/or senators:
“Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“How many people in the United States do you think will be willing to go to war to free Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Michael Corleone: My father is no different than any powerful man. Any man who’s responsible for other people. Like a senator or a president.
Kaye: Do you know how naive you sound?
Michael Corleone: Why?
Kaye: Senators and presidents don’t have men killed.”
—Mario Puzo (b. 1920)