EMILYs List Endorses Malia Cohen for California State Controller

For Immediate Release
January 27, 2022

EMILYs List Endorses Malia Cohen for California State Controller 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Malia Cohen for California state controller. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“EMILYs List is thrilled to endorse Malia Cohen on her groundbreaking campaign to become the first African American to serve as state controller of California. Malia has spent her entire career advocating for her community – fighting for public health, economic development, affordable housing, and opportunities for all to prosper. We look forward to supporting Malia as she continues to improve the lives of all California residents.” 

Malia Cohen was born and raised in San Francisco and attended public schools in the city. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Fisk University and a master’s degree in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University. She served as chair of the San Francisco Employee Retirement System, where she led the effort to divest from fossil fuels and thermal coal investments, as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and represented San Francisco’s 10th District for two terms. She is currently the first African American woman to serve on the State Board of Equalization and the president of the San Francisco Police Commission where she works for greater police accountability in the city. If elected, she would be the first African American to hold the position of California state controller.

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.