For Immediate Release
Updates to EMILY’s List Scorecard: Critical for Florida Voters
The Candidates: What Florida Women Should Know
WASHINGTON D.C. - EMILY's List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, today releases their evaluation of front runners going into Florida -- and exposes what Florida women and families should know about their records and their values.
Gingrich Voted to Cut $270 Billion from Medicare.
Today, 1.8 million Florida women over the age of 65 rely on Medicare for their health care needs.
Romney Advisor: Women No Longer Need Constitutional Protections.
Clearly, discrimination against women still persists. One needs to look no further than the workplace. In Florida, working women are paid over $7,000 less a year than their male counterparts -- which costs the state’s families more than $15.8 billion a year. If women and men in Florida were paid the same, each working woman in Florida could afford her mortgage and utility bills for four more months, her rent for seven more months, or more than a year’s worth of family health insurance premiums.
Santorum said he would counsel his daughter not to get an abortion even in the case of rape.
In Florida, nearly 1 in 6 women have been raped in their lifetime and 42% of Florida women have experienced other forms of sexual violence. Moreover, 72 percent of Florida counties have no abortion provider.
Ron Paul Supported Abolishing Minimum Wage.
In Florida, there were 173,000 women workers who were paid at or below the hourly minimum wage in 2010 -- an increase of 40,000 since the previous year. Also in 2010, 8.5 percent of hourly paid women workers in Florida earned the minimum wage or less.
The EMILY's List "Republican Presidential Scorecard" will be an ongoing effort to communicate with women voters about the Presidential race and what's at stake. The scorecard will be continually updated to adjust to the changing dynamics of the primary.
The EMILY's List "Republican Presidential Scorecard" shows the candidates who scored worst on women’s issues (in order of most egregious): former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; Congressman Ron Paul; former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney; former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA).
Changes to the score card include:
- All four Republican candidates supported the Ryan Budget -- which would have ended Medicare as we know it for 1.8 million women in Florida.
- All four Republican candidates supported private accounts for Social Security benefits which would directly impact Florida’s 1.5 million women receiving Social Security benefits.
To access additional information on the "Republican Presidential Scorecard" featured below, please see the EMILY’s List website: http://emilyslist.org/scorecard
In the 2009-2010 cycle, EMILY's List raised more than $38.5 million to support its mission of recruiting and supporting women candidates, helping them build strong campaigns, and mobilizing women voters to turn out and vote. With a community of more than 900,000 members across the country, EMILY's List is one of the largest political action committees in the nation. Since its founding in 1985, EMILY's List has worked to elect 86 pro-choice Democratic women to the U.S. House, 16 to the U.S. Senate, nine governors, and hundreds of women to the state legislatures, state constitutional offices, and other key local offices. In the 2009-2010 cycle, EMILY's List had the largest number of members and donors in our 25 year history.