WE Elect Democratic Pro-Choice Women To Office.

Up and down the ballot, our 2024 candidates proved that Democratic pro-choice women can win under the most difficult of circumstances and against extraordinary political headwinds.

Women held onto highly competitive Senate seats in three battleground states won by Donald Trump and won four House races in districts Trump carried. Our endorsed candidates have put women at the center of the most important fights that lay ahead during this most critical time in our country’s history.

In 2023, Jessica Mackler became the fourth president of EMILYs List when Laphonza Butler was appointed to the U.S. Senate. Jessica met the moment, bringing decades of battle-tested political strategy and campaign expertise to lead the organization through  historically volatile election cycle, delivering key wins against all odds. Jessica began her career at EMILYs List before spending nearly two decades working at all levels of campaigns all over the country.

In 2022, Democratic pro-choice women won up and down the ballot, defying the odds that the incumbent President’s party would have steep losses in the midterm elections.

8 women elected to governor seats
4 women re-elected to the Senate
36 women elected to the House
353 women elected to State and Local offices

In September 2021, EMILYs List welcomed Laphonza Butler as the third president in its 36-year history. Laphonza is the first woman of color and first mother to lead EMILYs List. She succeeded Stephanie Schriock, who led the organization for 11 years, and Ellen Malcolm, the organization’s founder. 

Laphonza joined EMILYs List as a history-maker with deep expertise in labor organizing and political strategy.

In 2020, we celebrated the historic election of Kamala Harris as our nation’s first woman vice president. She became the first Black woman and the first South Asian American woman elected vice president, breaking one of the highest glass ceilings for women in politics. EMILYs List has been honored to stand with Vice President Harris throughout her career, supporting her at the local, state, and federal levels.

We helped elect 34 new women to the House, including 24 red-to-blue flips — enough to have delivered the U.S. House majority alone!

Our candidates won the cycle’s only red-to-blue Senate flips, and tripled the number of Democratic women pro-choice governors. We helped elect more than 300 women on the state and local level.

More than 46,000 women reached out to EMILYs List about running for office, laying the groundwork for the next decade of progressive women in politics.

In 2016, EMILYs List helped Hillary Clinton become the first woman ever to become the presidential nominee of a major party – and she won the popular vote by nearly three million votes. We were proud to support her trailblazing campaign from day one, and we made historic gains for women’s leadership up and down the ballot.

Thanks in part to Secretary Clinton’s inspiring run, the EMILYs List community grew five million people in 2016.

In January 2010, EMILYs List announced Stephanie Schriock as our new president, and founder Ellen R. Malcolm became chair of the board.

With Stephanie at the helm, EMILYs List raised more than $460 million, endorsed more than 1,800 women, elected nearly 1,000 women up and down the ballot, and trained more than 14,000 women. She also led the expansion of our State and Local and Training departments and the creation of Run to Win, our national recruitment and training campaign.

EMILYs List House candidates’ victories helped Democrats gain control of the House, elevating Rep. Nancy Pelosi to her role as the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

EMILYs List was proud to help elect Amy Klobuchar and Claire McCaskill, which helped lead to the Democratic takeover of the Senate. Our Political Opportunity Program helped achieve the largest increase of Democratic women in statewide office in a single election in history.

In the 2002 elections, EMILYs List helped elect three new Democratic pro-choice women governors and added three new women of color to the U.S. House. Every EMILYs List incumbent seeking reelection won, and Democratic pro-choice Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi became the first woman party leader in Congress.

In 1992, dubbed the “Year of the Woman,” EMILYs List helped elect four new women senators and 20 new congresswomen. Membership grew more than 600 percent, with more than 23,000 members contributing over $10.2 million.
EMILYs List got national attention in March, when 60 Minutes aired a profile of Ellen and the organization. We explained our mission and goals to the nation — and the nation was listening. The segment raised awareness and led to explosive fundraising and membership growth.

In 1985, 25 women, rolodexes in hand, gathered in Ellen R. Malcolm’s basement to send letters to their friends about a network they were forming to raise money for Democratic pro-choice women candidates.

In 1986, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (MD) — one of EMILYs List’s first two endorsed candidates — became the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right. Known as the dean of the Senate women, Mikulski was the longest serving woman in the history of the United States Congress.