(FORTUNE Magazine) – The voters didn't produce much of a House cleaning this fall, and the Senate won't look that much different in January, either. Even so, there will be a new set of leaders in the House, some new faces in the cloakrooms of Capitol Hill this winter--and some new forces in national politics. Here are some of the newcomers most likely to become stars:

Judy Biggert: In this year's search for just the right campaign image, this new Republican House member from the Chicago suburbs might be the winner: car-pool mom and assistant soccer coach. She began her political career as a PTA president, but it really took off during six years in the state legislature, where she became the first state representative this century to be elected to the party leadership in her first term. The handpicked successor to seven-term Representative Harris W. Fawell, she campaigned with perhaps the most comprehensive set of position papers in the country.

Michael Capuano: A five-term Democratic mayor of Somerville, Mass., Capuano has inherited perhaps the most storied congressional seat in America, with just three predecessors in the past 52 years: John F. Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, and Joseph P. Kennedy II. He's used to being part of a distinguished lineage; he followed his father to the Ward 5 alderman's seat in his native city. Capuano has a market approach--he fought to allow cable TV competition in Somerville--and almost certainly will be a strong voice for the Democrats' education agenda.

Peter Fitzgerald: A relatively unknown state legislator who outspent, outmaneuvered, and outpolled Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, Fitzgerald has a habit of mounting insurgencies within the Republican Party. That's how he got to the state legislature in the first place, and that's how he wrestled away the GOP senatorial nomination this year. Now that he's joining a Republican Senate that is controlled by the insurgents, his other instinct might emerge: a quiet passion for finance. Indeed, Fitzgerald's election represents the ascension of a politician who melds the GOP's two warring wings, the social and economic conservatives. Look for him to be a strong opponent of abortion rights--and a vigorous supporter of tax cuts.

Grace Flores Napolitano: Only the fifth Latina ever elected to the House, Napolitano is one of very few politicians to begin a congressional career at age 61. She narrowly won her first election, to the Norwalk city council in Southern California, and then went on to serve as mayor and in the state assembly, never losing an election. Now, as the successor to nine-term Representative Esteban E. Torres, she's likely to push the Democratic caucus toward more aggressive efforts to open foreign markets to American goods.

Mark Udall: The son of a legendary member of the House, Morris K. Udall, this new Democratic lawmaker from Colorado is a vigorous protector of the environment and an advocate of the high-technology and quality-of-life issues that are at the center of the Western version of the New Democrat movement. The former director of the Colorado Outward Bound School, Udall is a cyclist, kayaker, hiker, and outspoken conservationist. Among his priorities: protection of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and designation of millions of acres of federal land in the West as wilderness.

George Voinovich: Now arrives in Washington a champion of cheapness. The two-term Republican governor of Ohio, about to be a newly minted senator, is the guy whose gubernatorial inaugural ball is best remembered for the fact that he paused in the men's room and picked a penny out of a urinal. He was the first governor to endorse Bob Dole for president and may take on Dole's dealmaking role in the Senate. But don't expect him to join the government-is-evil chorus in the GOP caucus. He has held office at the city, county, and state levels, and now will at the national.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter