EMILYs List Endorses Clarissa Cervantes for Riverside City Council

For Immediate Release
May 26, 2021

EMILYs List Endorses Clarissa Cervantes for Riverside City Council

Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Clarissa Cervantes for Riverside, CA City Council. Emily Cain, executive director of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List is proud to endorse Clarissa Cervantes for Riverside City Council. Clarissa has dedicated her career to empowering working families, increasing voter participation in elections at all levels, and fighting for social justice. As an openly bisexual and queer Latina, we know Clarissa will advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and equality for all at City Hall. We are thrilled to support her groundbreaking campaign.” 

Clarissa (she/they) is a mother and lifelong Riverside County resident. As a legislative field representative to Councilmember Andy Melendrez and organizer for SEIU 121RN, Clarissa has extensive community and legislative experience fighting for Riverside residents. Clarissa identifies as bisexual and queer, and, if elected, she would become the first openly LGBTQ+ person and first Latina elected to Ward 2.

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $700 million to elect Democratic pro-choice women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY's List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running nearly $50 million in independent expenditures in the last cycle alone, and turning out women voters and voters of color to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country's first woman as vice president, 157 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40 percent of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. After the 2016 election, more than 60,000 women reached out to EMILY's List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state, and national offices. In our effort to elect more women in offices across the country, we have created our Run to Win program, expanded our training program, including a Training Center online, and trained thousands of women.