EMILYs List Announces Nominees for 2022 Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award

For Immediate Release
March 22, 2022 

EMILY's List Announces Nominees for 2022 Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, announced its nominees for the 2022 Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award. They include: North Carolina state Rep. Vernetta Alston, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, Nevada state Rep. Cecelia González, Kansas state Rep. Christina Haswood, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, and Georgia state Rep. Bee Nguyen.

“We applaud our nominees for courageously, tirelessly, and effectively galvanizing change within their communities,” said Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List. “They have advanced justice and opportunity across a spectrum of issues, including: fighting for reproductive freedom, working to address the impacts of COVID-19, improving access to high quality education, clearing rape kit back logs, encouraging sustainability efforts and environmental action, promoting racial justice, and advocating for criminal justice and prison reform. EMILYs List celebrates the groundbreaking achievements of these exceptional women and we are proud to stand with them as they continue to effect change.”

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.

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.