Week of December 12, 2005

POP takes Texas: two pro-choice Democratic women win Houston runoff elections

On Dec. 10, the central regional team of the Political Opportunity Program (POP) scored two big victories right in President Bush's backyard!

EMILY's List staff helped two women win in runoff elections in Houston:

Ana Hernandez wins Texas House seat

Ana Hernandez won a special runoff election to the Texas House of Representatives with a resounding 61 percent of the vote. Hernandez has had an Horatio Alger-like rise from humble beginnings: her father has been a shift worker at an oil refinery for over 16 years and her mother worked in a school cafeteria. Hernandez was an honors student at the University of Houston, and went on to earn her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. The 27-year-old volunteers with Latinas on the Rise, an educational and mentorship program, and spent a summer as an intern with the Peace Corps in South Africa.

Sue Lovell wins at-large Houston City Council seat

Community activist Sue Lovell won a close runoff election for an at-large seat on the Houston City Council with 50.8 percent of the vote – a margin of only 579 votes in a citywide race!

An openly gay candidate, Lovell runs a nationwide jobs program that provides training, transportation, and child care to help mothers get off welfare and find good jobs. She helped start a community center at her church for middle school students that has helped curb gang-related violence in her neighborhood. The community center also offers health care for low-income women in the neighborhood.

Lovell is the second openly gay woman to win a spot in Houston's city government. Last year, POP helped elect Annise Parker as Houston city controller -- making Houston a progressive oasis in Bush's home state.

Health care tops women's concerns

EMILY's List/SEIU poll says health care is a winning issue for Democrats in 2006

Health care is a strong issue for women voters and will play a critical role in the 2006 elections, according to a new poll conducted for EMILY's List and SEIU Americans for Health Care. The national survey of 300 men and 700 women was conducted Nov. 10-15 by Lake Research Partners. The findings show health care to be a winning issue for Democrats -- especially for female Democratic candidates, who are seen as doing "a better job on health care" than their male Republican counterparts.

Click here to read a report on the survey.

Click here to view the PowerPoint presentation.

Anti-choice ballot measure could drive up right-wing voter turnout in Michigan

A virulent anti-choice group, Michigan Citizens for Life, has come one step closer to placing an initiative on the Michigan ballot guaranteed to draw hordes of conservative voters to the polls in November 2006, when Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Sen. Debbie Stabenow are up for re-election.

Michigan elected officials approved a petition drive for a ballot measure that would legally define personhood at the moment of conception, severely undermining the right to choose as guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. The measure could also restrict certain kinds of birth control. A second ballot measure that would ban affirmative action in government contracting and college admissions has already won ballot approval -- though civil rights supporters are legally challenging its misleading handle, the Michigan "Civil Rights" Initiative.

Republicans eager to defeat Granholm are no doubt discouraged by the results of a Nov. 20-23 EPIC/MRA poll that shows 64 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of her -- up nine points since October. Her rise in popularity helps, but it won't protect her from the vicious attacks she'll face from Republicans eager to recapture the Michigan governorship and Stabenow's Senate seat before the 2008 presidential election.

POP candidate moves up the pipeline

New Jersey's Stender to run for Congress

Linda Stender, who recently won a third term in the New Jersey Assembly with the help of EMILY's List's Political Opportunity Program (POP), declared her candidacy for the U.S. House on Dec. 14. Stender hopes to challenge Republican incumbent Mike Ferguson in the seventh congressional district, a promising Democratic pick-up opportunity. Stender, a member of the Assembly since 2002, served on the Union County Board of Freeholders from 1994 until 2002. She attended EMILY's List's federal candidate training in August.

"I am pursuing this because I want to take the country back," Stender told the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Her colleagues agree that she's the woman for the job. "She has proven herself at every level, including locally as a mayor, at the county [level] as freeholder and at the state [level] as an assemblywoman," said Alexander Mirabella, a former colleague from the Union County Freeholder board. "And she will bring that collective expertise to the federal level."