Planned Parenthood Votes and EMILY’s List Launch Electoral Work in Nevada With Six-Figure Expenditure
For Immediate Release: Aug. 26, 2016
Washington, DC –– Today, Planned Parenthood Votes and EMILY’s List’s WOMEN VOTE! announced the launch of their Senate work in Nevada with a joint ad campaign targeting Republican Senate Candidate, Congressman Joe Heck, for his dangerous positions on women’s health, including his votes to defund Planned Parenthood. Together, the groups will be spending over $500,000 on this campaign. EMILY’s List’s mail program will reach 70,000 Nevadans starting this week and Planned Parenthood Votes’ digital ad buy, which runs next week, will reach nearly 300,000 Nevadans, including the 70,000 Nevadans targeted in the mail program.
"Congressman Joe Heck has voted every chance he gets to defund Planned Parenthood and block Nevada women from access to birth control, cancer screenings and other essential health care," said Deirdre Schifeling, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Votes. “He doesn't believe women deserve to make their own decisions about their bodies and their healthcare. Joe Heck is bad for Nevada women. This fall, we’re knocking on doors and making phone calls to tens of thousands of Nevada voters to make sure they know what Joe Heck's been up to in Washington, DC."
“EMILY’s List is committed to making history in Nevada by electing Catherine Cortez Masto as the first Latina to ever serve in the United States Senate,” said EMILY’s List Executive Director Jessica O’Connell. “Congressman Joe Heck has a long record of driving an extreme, anti-woman and anti-immigrant agenda that hurts Nevadans across the state. From wanting to roll back women’s access to health care, to stating that children born in this country should not automatically be citizens, Congressman Heck’s agenda is wrong for Nevada, and it’s wrong for the United States Senate.”
Both Planned Parenthood Votes and EMILY’s List are zeroing in on Nevada and investing heavily in a variety of ways to ensure that women’s health champions are elected this November and that Nevada women’s voices are heard at all levels of government. At the top of the ticket, the women’s organizations are working to elect Hillary Clinton to the White House. Currently, EMILY’s List is communicating with millennial women in Nevada through digital and native advertising on outlets frequently visited by millennial women to educate and mobilize them to vote for Hillary Clinton this election cycle.
Planned Parenthood Votes is building a robust field program this election cycle focused on canvassing, phone banking, and grassroots organizing to engage with women, young people, and Latino voters in Clark and Washoe Counties. The field program will focus on Catherine Cortez Masto’s record as a women’s health champion while educating voters on Joe Heck’s efforts to restrict women’s access to health care and his votes to defund Planned Parenthood. If elected, Catherine Cortez Masto would be the first Latina ever to serve in the United States Senate. With Latinos being the fastest growing ethnic group of voters in America, it is past overdue that a Latina is present in the Senate.
Through volunteer and paid canvassing, Planned Parenthood Votes will knock on over 140,000 doors in Clark and Washoe Counties and make over 62,000 phone calls through a large, active volunteer program.
Additionally, both organizations are focusing on many Nevada races down ticket to ensure that diverse perspectives are at the decision-making table who will fight for policies that benefit all Nevadans. To this end, EMILY’s List has endorsed Jacky Rosen, running for Congress in Nevada’s Third Congressional District, and recently launched the program “Focus 2020,” aimed to elect more pro-choice Democratic women to the Nevada State Senate and Assembly over the next three election cycles. The goal of the program is to ensure that Democratic women play a role in the redistricting process that will begin after the 2020 census, ensure that our Congressional districts are drawn more fairly, and stand up against anti-woman legislation being driven by GOP legislatures across the country. The organization will invest $1 million on the “Focus 2020” effort nationwide in 2016.