EMILYs List Endorses Jill Tokuda for Congress

For Immediate Release
June 3, 2022 

EMILYs List Endorses Jill Tokuda for Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Jill Tokuda for election to represent Hawai'i’s 2nd Congressional District. EMILYs List President Laphonza Butler released the following statement:
 
“Jill Tokuda’s record from her time serving in the Hawai'i state Senate speaks for itself. She fought for improved childhood education and increased access to health care in Hawai'i public schools, and she has worked to elect Democratic pro-choice women to office up and down the ballot in Hawai'i. EMILYs List is confident that Tokuda will take that same spirit and determination to Congress, and we are proud to support her campaign to be the next representative of Hawai'i’s 2nd Congressional District.”
 
Former state Sen. Jill Tokuda is a devoted public servant with a record of distinguished leadership. Tokuda was endorsed by EMILYs List in 2006 in her initial run for Hawai'i’s state Senate, where she proudly served for 12 years. During her time in office, she chaired the Ways and Means, Labor, Education, Higher Education, and Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs committees while also serving as majority whip. Tokuda is a champion for Hawai'i’s students and families: in office, she prioritized Hawai'i’s children and their families by expanding access to preschool and college education. She is also skilled at managing budgets: after her time in the state Senate, she took the lead working with state and county officials to track billions in federal funds coming into Hawai'i for pandemic relief. She lives with her husband, Kyle, and their two sons in a multi-generational household in Kaneohe, Hawai'i, where their sons attend the same public schools as Tokuda and her husband did.

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, 159 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40% 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.