Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen Nominated by EMILYs List for 2022 Gabrielle
For Immediate Release
March 22, 2022
Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen Nominated by EMILY's List for 2022 Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, announced that Georgia state Rep. Bee Nguyen is a nominee for the ninth annual Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award.
“Bee Nguyen has proven to be a fearless advocate for the people of Georgia,” said Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List. “She made history in 2017 when elected as the first Asian American Democratic woman to the Georgia General Assembly, and has tenaciously defended democracy and advanced justice throughout her time in office. She is a champion for voting rights, standing up against efforts to suppress votes and ensuring all Georgia residents can participate in a free and fair democracy. She successfully led the fight to repeal the ‘exact match’ policy that froze the voter registrations of 53,000 Georgians – most of whom were people of color. After the 2020 presidential election, she methodically defended the integrity of Georgia’s vote against bad faith claims by the former President in a Georgia committee hearing. She has proven to be an innovative and courageous leader, and we are excited to nominate her for this year’s Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award.”
EMILYs List endorsed Rep. Bee Nguyen in the 2017 special election and the 2020 election for Georgia House District 89, both of which Nguyen won. EMILYs List is standing by Nguyen in her current race for Georgia secretary of state.
About Rep. Bee Nguyen
In 2017, Bee Nguyen became the first Asian-American Democratic woman elected to the Georgia legislature. She founded a nonprofit dedicated to empowering and educating young women and for 10 years served as its executive director. As a state representative, Bee has worked to advocate for voting rights, public education, and criminal justice reform. She is a graduate of Georgia State University and received a Master of Public Administration from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.
About the Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award
Named in honor of the dedicated and courageous Gabrielle Giffords, the Rising Star Award celebrates an extraordinary woman serving in state or local office. The award honors a woman who demonstrates the sort of commitment to community, dedication to women and families, and determination and civility that have been the highlights of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ career, in and out of office. Previous Rising Star Award recipients include former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams in 2014, former Boston City Councilwoman Ayanna Pressley in 2015, former Colorado House Speaker Crisanta Duran in 2016, Philadelphia City Councilwoman Helen Gym in 2017, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in 2018, California Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo in 2019, former Ohio House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes in 2020, and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo in 2021.
The Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award winner will be chosen with community input. Online voting can be found here.
Georgia state Rep. Bee Nguyen is nominated alongside:
- Vernetta Alston, North Carolina state representative
- Kate Gallego, Phoenix mayor
- Cecelia González, Nevada state representative
- Christina Haswood, Kansas state representative
- Tishaura O. Jones, St. Louis mayor
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.
