EMILYs List Statement on James Craig Secret Audio Recording

For Immediate Release
September 21, 2021

EMILYs List Statement on James Craig Secret Audio Recording

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a secret audio recording, Republican gubernatorial candidate James Craig said that if elected, he would block any attempts by Democrats to repeal Michigan’s 90-year-old ban on abortion. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement in response:

“James Craig has been trying to hide his position on restricting abortion care. But in private, he had no qualms about admitting the truth: As governor, James Craig will do everything in his power to implement a complete ban on abortion in Michigan and will stand in the way of any Democrat-led efforts to protect reproductive freedom. 

“We cannot allow James Craig and Michigan Republicans to revert to a nearly 100-year-old law that strips pregnant people of their bodily autonomy and criminalizes health care providers. Voters in Michigan deserve a leader who will never stop protecting their reproductive freedom in the face of these unprecedented attacks on abortion care. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is a Democratic pro-choice champion, and EMILYs List will do everything in our power to reelect her.”

To read James Craig’s comments from the secret audio recording, click here.

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.

###