Prior to the 2020 United States presidential election cycle, only five women throughout history had made it to a major party's primary debate stage: Democrats Shirley Chisholm (in 1972), Carol Moseley Braun (in 2004), and Hillary Clinton (in 2008 and 2016), and Republicans Michele Bachmann (in 2012) and Carly Fiorina (in 2016); there had never been more than one woman on the debate stage at one time, and there had never been more than two women running per party at one time. In the 2020 presidential election cycle, a record-breaking six women ran for president in the Democratic Party: Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Kamala Harris of California, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, and author Marianne Williamson. The initial night of the first Democratic primary debate, which took place on June 26–27, 2019, marked a major milestone, as it featured three women: Warren, Klobuchar, and Gabbard; Harris, Gillibrand, and Williamson participated on the second night.