EMILYs List Endorses Lydia Edwards in Special Election For Massachusetts State Senate

For Immediate Release
October 19, 2021

EMILYs List Endorses Lydia Edwards in Special Election For Massachusetts State Senate

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Lydia Edwards in the special election to represent the 1st Suffolk and Middlesex District in the Massachusetts state Senate. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List is thrilled to endorse Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards in the special election to represent Suffolk and Middlesex in the Massachusetts state Senate. On the City Council, Edwards has been a leader on housing, zoning and development, labor protections, environmental protection, and infrastructure projects. As a state senator, she will have more opportunities to advocate for her community and constituents. We are proud to stand with Lydia Edwards as she runs to be the first woman and first Black person to represent the 1st Suffolk and Middlesex District in the Massachusetts state Senate.”

Councilor Lydia Edwards served as a law clerk with the Massachusetts Superior Court and the Massachusetts Appeals Court, a public interest attorney with Greater Boston Legal Services, and as deputy director of the mayor’s Office of Housing Stability. Edwards also served as the statewide campaign coordinator for the Massachusetts Coalition for Domestic Workers, which advocated for the passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. In 2015, she was named a Bostonian of the Year honorable mention by The Boston Globe. She first ran for Boston City Council in 2017 and won reelection in 2019. If she wins the special election, Edwards would be the only Black person in the state Senate.

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.