EMILYs List Endorses Shirley Weber for Secretary of State in California

For Immediate Release
April 12, 2022

EMILY's List Endorses Shirley Weber for Secretary of State in California

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Shirley Weber for secretary of state of California. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List is thrilled to endorse Dr. Shirley Weber for secretary of state of California. Secretary Weber became California’s first Black secretary of state after being nominated to serve by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, and has led with integrity and compassion since then. Throughout her time in public office, she has been a fierce advocate for civil rights, public education, reproductive rights, and voting rights. As voting rights face attacks across the nation, we are confident that Secretary Weber will continue to preserve and protect California’s elections.”

Dr. Shirley N. Weber was born to sharecroppers in Hope, Arkansas during the segregationist Jim Crow era. Although her family moved to California when Weber was three years old, her family’s experience in the Jim Crow South, including her father being threatened by a lynch mob and denied the right to vote, have shaped her public service career. Weber attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her bachelor’s, master’s, and a doctorate degree. Weber worked as a professor at San Diego State University in the Department of Africana Studies for 40 years. She then served four terms as an Assembly member representing California’s 79th Assembly District. She was nominated to serve as California secretary of state by Gov. Gavin Newsom in December 2020. Secretary Weber is California’s first Black secretary of state and only the fifth Black person to serve as a state constitutional officer in California’s 170-year history.

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.