EMILYs List Endorses Val Arkoosh For U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania

For Immediate Release

June 21, 2021

EMILYs List Endorses Val Arkoosh For U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania

Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Val Arkoosh for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. Emily Cain, executive director of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List is proud to endorse Val Arkoosh for U.S. Senate. Val has seen firsthand the challenges facing Pennsylvania’s working families. In her time as a physician, she saw the traumatic impact of gun violence, the outrageous cost of health care and prescription drugs, and the systemic inequities in health care based on race, gender, and income. As chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, Val has worked tirelessly to implement policies that will benefit working families, including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and providing paid parental leave for county employees, rebuilding critical infrastructure, and creating new jobs. 

“Pennsylvania, like much of the country, is at a critical moment– from the continued health and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to national debates on how best to address systemic racism and climate change. If we want to continue making progress, we must expand our Democratic majority in the Senate with strong women leaders like Val, who will fight every day to improve the lives of all Pennsylvanians, and EMILYs List is proud to stand with her.”

Prior to stepping into public service, Val served more than two decades in operating rooms and hospitals caring for patients as a physician. She served on the faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and at a number of other Pennsylvania medical schools. After realizing that the issues most impacting her patients were happening outside the exam room, Val obtained a Masters of Public Health and began advocating for comprehensive health care reform at the national level. In 2015, Val was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners and later won election to a full four-year term in her own right. In 2016, she was elected as the first female chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. If elected, Val would be Pennsylvania’s first female U.S. senator.

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.