EMILYs List Congratulates Melanie Stansbury on Her Victory in the Special Election for New Mexico

For Immediate Release

June 1, 2021

EMILYs List Congratulates Melanie Stansbury on Her Victory in the Special Election for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District

Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, congratulated Melanie Stansbury on her victory in the race for New Mexico’s 1stCongressional District. Emily Cain, executive director of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“The EMILYs List community is excited to congratulate Melanie Stansbury on her special election victory. Melanie has been a leader in tackling the pandemic, growing the economy and good jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and more. We know she will continue to fight for the interests of New Mexico’s families from Washington.”

Born and raised in New Mexico, Melanie Stansbury knows firsthand the challenges working families face. Her mother worked as a seamstress and heavy equipment operator, while her extended family owned a mom-and-pop landscaping and irrigation business. Early in her career, Melanie worked as a science educator in schools across the state through the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. She went on to work as a researcher and advisor on land and water issues, focused on New Mexico’s water needs and the resilience of rivers. Melanie took this work to Washington D.C., where she worked in the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Senate on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. After returning home to Albuquerque, she stepped up to run for office for the first time in 2018. Melanie defeated a seven-term Republican incumbent to become the first woman to represent her state legislative district.

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.