Eric Lynn is a Democrat running for Florida’s Congressional District 13, which covers parts of Pinellas County. He was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration. According to his campaign’s website, Lynn is a Pinellas County native who graduated from St. Petersburg High School.
Eric was appointed by the President to serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Obama Administration.
On WMNF’s Tuesday Cafe, Eric Lynn talked about ideas he has to protect women’s access to abortion, strengthen Social Security, reduce inflation and end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Other candidates in FL-13
There are four other candidates in the race for Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
Anna Paulina Luna won the August Republican primary over Amanda Makki, Christine Y. Quinn, Kevin Hayslett and Moneer Kheireddine. Frank Craft is with the Libertarian Party of Florida. There are two qualified write-in candidates: Dwight Young and Jacob Daniel Curnow.
WMNF invited Anna Paulina Luna on the show, but her scheduler wrote, “She has another interview scheduled at the same time.”
Listen to the whole show here:
Watch the interview with Eric Lynn here:
Here’s a partial transcript of WMNF’s interview with Eric Lynn
In the Dobbs decision, that overturned Roe vs Wade the Supreme Court overturned 50 years of rights that have been afforded to women. To have the freedom to make their own health care decisions between themselves and their doctor. Not to be forced by government or anyone else to be told what they can or cannot do with their bodies.
It is a very extreme rollback of rights and what we need to do is ensure that those rights are afforded to women here in Pinellas County, in Florida and across the country.
The way that we can do it is by codifying the rights that Roe afforded in Federal legislation in Washington by the United States Congress. I have committed to vote for the codification of the rights that Roe afforded.
And I can tell you today, Seán, and I want to tell all of your listeners — anyone who feels that a woman deserves the freedom to make her own health care decisions about her body needs to vote for Eric Lynn for Congress in this election. Because my opponent is not just someone who says casually, she opposes abortion rights. She has described herself on video as a pro-life extremist.
She stands for banning all abortion rights with no exceptions. That means, Seán, no exceptions for victims of rape. No exceptions for victims of incest and no exceptions to save the life of a mother if her health is in danger.
That is barbaric, it is extreme, it is wrong, and it does not represent the views of the people of Pinellas County.
The most recent polling shows that 6 in 10, over 60%, of voters in Pinellas County support the rights that Roe afforded and a women’s freedom to make her own decisions about her body. That is what the community supports, that’s why I am the commonsense centrist candidate in this race and that’s why your listeners need to vote for someone who’s going to stand up for those rights.
SK: This is Eric Lynn, a democrat running for Congress in Pinellas County, you are listening to WMNF 88.5 FM. Another priority that you mentioned, Eric, is economic security. On your website it says that you will protect and expand social security. How will you do that and why do you think that social security needs protection and expansion?
Yeah, great question. If I can I know you want to talk about social security, and I do as well because it’s so important to protect the social security of our seniors. We all know how many seniors live here in Pinellas County, and social security is our funds that people have paid into them for their entire lives, they deserve to receive them as they become of age to receive social security and we can talk about that in a minute.
But you mentioned an economy that works for everyone and economic security, and what I want to say here is that we must cut back the inflation our country is experiencing. What I have stated is the ways to do that, first is by lowering middle class taxes, unfortunately, the tax cut that Donald Trump has pushed forward on and that Luna has stated she supports that is a tax cut for the wealthy. We need middle-class tax cuts.
Second, we have to lower health care and prescription drug costs. Cause you know so many seniors here in our community are paying way too much for their prescription drugs. I just talked to a woman this past week who said that she has to make a decision at the end of the month whether she is going to buy her prescription drugs that she needs in order to stay healthy, or to go to the store that week to buy her groceries and her food.
That is wrong should not take place in Pinellas it should not take place in Florida or across the country. And that means we need to negotiate those prescription drug costs. There are now ways that we can negotiate some prescription drugs, but we must be able to negotiate many many more.
Now one final piece, we have to incentivize training for the supply chain delays that we are facing right now in our economy as you know there is a huge supply chain delay particularly coming out of Asia when China shut down fully. Most recently for their COVID problems about four months ago. That has led to a backlog in the supply chain, but we have our own backlog in the US supply chain.
Because once those containers ships come to port on the East coast and the West coast of Florida those containers are, unfortunately, staying on those ships for way too long. If you go to a port in the United States, you will see container ships and the container are staying on. That’s because we need more longshoremen to be able to take those containers safely off those ships and put them on the trucks and we need more truck drivers to be able to drive those containers with the goods down here to Florida and to across the United States.
The way we do that is by incentivizing people to become and train you definitely need serious training to have these excellent jobs. Longshoremen and truck drivers that’s task incentives — that is breaks on the training courses and there is a need to continue to increase our supply chain employment and we have to put Americans back to work that’s how we end this supply chain delay.
Now, sorry for that long answer but let’s come to social security.
SK: Let me remind people before you talk about social security that we are speaking with Eric Lynn a democrat running for congress in Pinellas County and this is WMNF 88.5 FM. So yes, tell us about social security and your plans for saving it.
Absolutely. So social security is not an entitlement. It is a fund that every working American has paid into for their entire lives and deserves to receive when and to help so many across Pinellas County.
First, we need to end the penalization of widows and widowers for having two incomes we need to end the five-month waiting period. We need to extend the social security dependent benefits and we also need to repeal some programs that are hurting our social security recipients right now known as WEP and GPO.
There is currently a bill in Congress by my friend Congressman John Larson in Connecticut and we need to make sure that bill gets passed in order to protect social security and I will support that hopefully as the representative if elected here in Pinellas County.
WMNF’s Tuesday Café
Eric Lynn was on WMNF’s Tuesday Café on October 4, 2022. Also on the show was Jimmy Dunson, a volunteer with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief to talk about solidarity in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.
You can listen every Tuesday on 88.5 FM in Tampa Bay, on wmnf.org or on the WMNF Community Radio app.
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