EMILYs List Statement on Tom Barrett’s Candidacy in MI-08

For Immediate Release

November 15, 2021

EMILYs List Statement on Tom Barrett’s Candidacy in MI-08

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett announced his challenge to Rep. Elissa Slotkin to represent Michigan’s 8th Congressional District. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement in response:

“Throughout his career, Tom Barrett has prioritized his political party’s extreme agenda over Michiganders. In the state Legislature, Barrett opposed prevailing wage requirements and gutted the state’s minimum wage increase. These actions have enriched Barrett’s corporate donors, all while harming Michigan’s struggling workers and families.  

“Congresswoman Slotkin has worked tirelessly in Congress to help Michigan families. In this term alone, she has been a champion for the child tax credit, paid parental leave, Medicare expansion, lower prescription drug prices, and infrastructure. She knows what the families in her district need, and she will never stop fighting to get it done. EMILYs List is proud to stand with Rep. Slotkin in her campaign for reelection.”

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.