EMILYs List Congratulates Valerie Foushee on Advancing to the General Election for NC-4

For Immediate Release
May 17, 2022 

EMILY's List Congratulates Valerie Foushee on Advancing to the General Election for North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, congratulated state Sen. Valerie Foushee on advancing to the general election to represent North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List congratulates state Sen. Valerie Foushee for winning the Democratic primary to represent North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Foushee has dedicated her career to North Carolina and to the people that call the state home, working in public office to advance opportunity and equality for over two decades. She is a dedicated advocate of reproductive and voting rights, educational equity, and climate change solutions, and we know she will continue fighting for our rights in Congress. Foushee is poised to become both the first woman and the first person of color to represent the district, and EMILYs List is proud to stand alongside her as she wins this seat and makes history.”

State Sen. Valerie Foushee is a lifelong North Carolinian and distinguished leader running to represent North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Foushee was born the oldest of six children in a family working to make ends meet. She credits her parents with instilling in her the importance of hard work and service to the community. Foushee was enrolled in segregated schooling until the sixth grade, and volunteering in her own children’s classrooms after long night shifts made her realize that kids, especially Black and brown kids in her community, needed an advocate. She ran for school board and won, and has since dedicated her career to public service. Over the next 24 years, she became the first African American woman elected to the Orange County Board of Commissioners, and went on to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly. Foushee is married to her high school sweetheart, Stan, with whom she has two sons and one grandson.

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.