EMILYs List Endorses Lorena González for Mayor of Seattle

For Immediate Release

August 17, 2021

EMILYs List Endorses Lorena González for Mayor of Seattle

Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Lorena González in the race for mayor of Seattle. Emily Cain, executive director of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List is thrilled to endorse Lorena González in her historic campaign to become the first Latinx mayor of Seattle and only the third woman to hold the position. We are confident that as mayor, Lorena will use her lived experiences to fight for the people of Seattle. Lorena brought her passion for public service, economic justice, and social justice to the Seattle City Council, and we look forward to seeing how she continues to better the lives of all of the city’s families as its next mayor.”  

Councilmember Lorena González was elected as the first Latinx ever to hold a seat on the Seattle City Council in 2015 and dedicated herself to addressing challenges like homelessness, police accountability, and economic stratification. In 2020, her colleagues elected her to lead as Council president. Lorena was born and raised in a migrant farm-working family in Central Washington, where she began working as a migrant farmworker at the age of 8. Lorena worked her way through community college, received a business degree at Washington State University, and earned a Juris Doctor from Seattle University School of Law. After becoming the first attorney in her family, Lorena worked as a civil rights attorney fighting for workers, victims of employment discrimination, and victims of police misconduct and sexual abuse. 

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, 158 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.