EMILYs List Endorses Hillary Scholten for Congress

For Immediate Release
March 11, 2022

EMILY's List Endorses Hillary Scholten for Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Hillary Scholten to represent Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement: 

“EMILYs List is proud to endorse Hillary Scholten for Michigan’s newly redrawn 3rd Congressional District, and we know she has what it takes to win. Scholten’s outstanding record of service is deeply rooted in her faith and commitment to community. From combatting housing discrimination on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS to serving at the Department of Justice to working as an immigration attorney at a local legal aid center, she has dedicated her career to furthering justice, equity, and opportunity. Rep. Peter Meijer’s failed leadership has hurt the people he was elected to serve, and Scholten is ready to give West Michigan families a new voice in Congress. EMILYs List is excited to be with Hillary Scholten every step of the way in the fight to flip this crucial seat and to move Michigan forward.”

The daughter of a local reporter and an elementary school teacher, Hillary Scholten was inspired by her parents to give back to her community, and to stand up and do something about injustices she saw around her. An invested member of her church and her community, she has lived her values by dedicating her career to service. Scholten earned a degree in social work and became a case worker for members of the LGBTQ+ community who faced housing discrimination. She then went to law school and clerked for the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit before working for the Department of Justice under President Obama. In 2017 she returned to Michigan and joined the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center as an attorney and volunteered with the Times Up Legal Defense Fund, offering her legal expertise to those whom the system has left behind and ignored. Scholten and her husband live in Grand Rapids, Michigan with their two young sons, in the same neighborhood where her grandparents grew up.

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.