Eunice Lehmacher

Decades of work in health care and education have taught Eunice that the problems she's faced locally often require change at the federal level. That's why she is running to represent South Carolina’s District 3 in the US House of Representatives, where she will continue to advocate for vulnerable populations, fight to protect South Carolina's natural beauty and resources, and foster conditions where families, individuals and small businesses can thrive and grow.

Make housing, groceries, utilities, child care, college, and other necessities more affordable.

• Focus federal economic policy on working families, seniors, students, and small businesses.

Rein in tariffs and unnecessary foreign conflicts that increase household costs.

• Consider family affordability when setting trade and foreign policy.

Lower health-insurance costs and increase patients' choices among doctors and hospitals.

• Improve both affordability and local access.

Invest in lower-cost clean energy to reduce household utility costs.

• Pair energy affordability with environmental protection.

Invest in Upstate parks, trails, roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure.

• Use federal support to improve community quality of life.

Protect Upstate land and water from harmful development by powerful corporations and investors.

• Use planning and stewardship to preserve regional quality of life.

Stop federal funding for masked immigration-enforcement operations that threaten or unlawfully harm residents.

• Require identifiable and accountable enforcement.

Oppose unjust, unnecessary, and costly military aggression, including conflicts not authorized by Congress.

• Reassert congressional authority before major offensive action.

Defend speech, press, religious, assembly, and firearm rights against government threats.

• Treat both amendments as constitutional safeguards.

End attacks on evidence-based public-health policy and prevent avoidable disease outbreaks.

• Use sound medical evidence in federal health decisions.

Reduce the cost of insurance, medications, and medical treatment.

• Prevent necessary care from causing financial ruin.

Increase access to local obstetric, specialty, therapy, and other health-care providers.

• Address provider shortages in underserved areas.

Restore federal funding for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

• Preserve coverage and provider access.

Support the MediKids Act and automatic health-coverage enrollment for children and young adults through age 26.

• Reduce gaps in youth and young-adult coverage.

Increase enrollment capacity for nurses, therapists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, doctors, and specialists.

• Address critical health-workforce shortages.

Increase federal funding for residency programs that train medical professionals in rural communities.

• Build a long-term rural provider pipeline.

Restore federal research funding for cancer, vaccines, diabetes, hypertension, ALS, dementia, autoimmune disease, and other chronic conditions.

• Rebuild lifesaving scientific capacity.

Increase funding for respite services supporting caregivers of disabled children and adults and people with chronic conditions.

• Expand community long-term care options.

Resume accurate, public collection and reporting of communicable- and chronic-disease data.

• Make federal health surveillance transparent and dependable.

Restore Veterans Administration staffing and budget capacity needed to provide medical care.

• Reverse service losses attributed to recent cuts.

Create a standard audit procedure for managed-care organizations serving Medicare and Medicaid patients.

• Apply consistent federal oversight.

Prevent managed-care organizations from reclaiming provider payments solely for minor technical or clerical errors.

• Reduce disincentives to serve Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Make specified Medicare and Medicaid requirements standard across plans to increase participating providers.

• Reduce plan-by-plan administrative barriers.

Lower the Medicare eligibility age to 64 and reduce it further in subsequent years.

• Expand coverage through a phased approach.

Improve access to affordable health coverage for small-business owners and their employees.

• Address gaps created by employment-linked insurance markets.

Stop mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and refugees without serious criminal records.

• Prioritize removal of people who commit serious crimes.

Allow migrants to request asylum at official ports of entry and prohibit deportation before their claims are decided.

• Follow existing asylum law and credible-fear procedures.

Raise federal legal-immigration caps that have not kept pace with workforce needs.

• Provide more lawful entry routes and reduce incentives for unauthorized migration.

Add immigration judges, make asylum decisions faster, and protect adjudicators from political interference.

• Improve timely and fair case resolution.

Increase access to legal counsel for people navigating the asylum process.

• Improve procedural fairness.

Increase enforcement against unauthorized entry between official border crossings.

• Allow newly arrived migrants to remain only after official entry and a credible-fear interview.

Create a path to long-term legal status, potentially including citizenship, for qualifying long-term undocumented residents without criminal records.

• Pair legalization with updated enforcement and asylum law.

Restore and increase federal support for solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other renewable generation.

• Reduce energy costs and pollution.

Reform permitting to accelerate solar and wind projects.

• Move clean generation into service more quickly.

Increase federal funding for electric-vehicle chargers and battery research.

• Support transportation electrification and domestic innovation.

End federal tax and spending subsidies for large oil companies.

• Stop public support described by the campaign as corporate welfare.

Pause new fossil-fuel infrastructure unless it can be shown to be faster and cheaper for ratepayers over its operating life.

• Apply cost and timing tests before new gas-fired generation.

Require data centers to pay the full cost of their electricity use and related grid infrastructure.

• Prevent cost shifting to residential ratepayers.

Require new and existing data centers to obtain at least half their energy from renewable sources.

• Tie digital infrastructure growth to cleaner generation.

Require data centers to use cooling systems that do not consume local water supplies.

• Protect lakes, rivers, and coastal resources.

Restore renewable-generation projects, including offshore wind developments, cancelled by the current administration.

• Resume previously planned clean-energy capacity.

Ban new oil and gas drilling in national parks, Arctic areas, and coastal lands.

• Protect sensitive public resources.

Require fossil-fuel companies to cover the full cost of pollution, spills, and land restoration.

• Prevent cleanup costs from shifting to taxpayers.

Restore and enforce federal pollution standards for coal-fired power plants.

• Apply air- and water-protection requirements consistently.

Improve the electric grid so power can reach areas of demand reliably.

• Support integration of diverse generation sources.

Set strong pollution standards and restore the Environmental Protection Agency's core air- and water-enforcement mission.

• Make polluters pay for harmful emissions and discharges.

Increase research on sustaining human and ecological life under a warming climate.

• Use science to guide adaptation policy.

Fund resilience programs helping households relocate from flood-prone places and limit repeated federal rebuilding subsidies in high-risk locations.

• Align disaster assistance with long-term risk reduction.

Buy more electric vehicles for federal use and incentivize state and county governments to do the same.

• Use public procurement to accelerate adoption.

Support existing passenger rail and increase investment in high-speed commuter rail.

• Provide lower-emission transportation alternatives.

Require governments and businesses to publish consistent, transparent climate-risk and emissions information.

• Make participation mandatory.

Provide federal incentives for farmers who adopt regenerative agricultural practices.

• Reward soil, water, and climate benefits.

Oppose legislation that unnecessarily restricts eligible voters' access to the ballot.

• Make participation practical in every election.

Use ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting to improve representative election outcomes.

• Build on methods already used for some overseas military voters.

Use nonpartisan citizen bodies to draw voting districts.

• Make elected officials responsive to voters rather than mapmakers.

Prohibit partisan redrawing of congressional districts between decennial censuses.

• Preserve stable representation between regular cycles.

Reverse Citizens United and ban corporate political-action committee contributions.

• Limit unlimited corporate influence in elections.

Create a public campaign-financing system that reduces candidates' dependence on wealthy donors.

• Center ordinary voters in election funding.

Require disclosure and prohibit dark-money funding of political campaigns in every state.

• Make the sources of election spending public.

Allow every eligible voter to use absentee voting without providing a special excuse.

• Expand flexible ballot access.

Provide at least one Saturday and one Sunday of early voting in each federal election.

• Make voting accessible outside standard work hours.

Protect mail-in voting and ensure absentee ballots are delivered and counted.

• Maintain dependable postal-ballot administration.

Automatically register eligible citizens to vote when they turn 18 or otherwise become eligible.

• Reduce registration barriers.

Require at least 72 hours of voter notice before a polling place is closed or changed.

• Prevent surprise access barriers.

Require adequate parking, functioning accessible equipment, and removal of structural barriers at polling sites.

• Enable curbside and disability-access voting.

Use multi-member districts to elect representatives.

• Broaden representation within geographic areas.

Support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

• Restore and strengthen federal voting-rights protections.

Make federal election day a national holiday.

• Give more workers time to vote.

Create federal tenant protections limiting excessive rent increases, guaranteeing counsel in eviction cases, and prohibiting no-cause evictions.

• Establish a national baseline of renter rights.

Increase funding for Federal Home Loan Banks to expand access to housing finance.

• Improve mortgage and community-lending capacity.

Reward and replicate local partnerships that successfully expand housing opportunity.

• Support cooperation among government, business, nonprofits, and faith groups.

Create grants converting abandoned hotels, schools, dormitories, offices, and warehouses into housing.

• Add supply through adaptive reuse.

Provide grants and tax incentives for churches and nonprofits to build housing on underused land.

• Mobilize community-owned property for affordability.

Fund smart-growth projects placing housing near employment and public transportation and incorporating child-care centers.

• Reduce commuting and caregiving burdens.

Encourage developments where students, seniors, and working families live near colleges and urban services.

• Expand flexible housing models.

Maintain public oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rather than privatizing them.

• Preserve public accountability in mortgage finance.

Increase federal funding for housing serving people with disabilities, chronic mental illness, and people experiencing homelessness.

• Pair affordability with supportive services where needed.

Support community land trusts, especially in rural areas, to stabilize land costs.

• Separate land appreciation from long-term affordability.

Remove tax advantages that allow large landlords and private-equity firms to outbid individual buyers for single-family homes.

• Reduce institutional concentration in starter-home markets.

Increase funding for USDA Rural Housing Service loan programs.

• Expand ownership and rental options in rural communities.

Encourage employers and local governments to offer down-payment and closing-cost assistance as an employee benefit.

• Help working households enter homeownership.

Provide home-purchase assistance for teachers, first responders, and health-care workers living near their workplaces.

• Strengthen workforce stability in essential services.

Increase grants to community lenders financing housing and small development in underserved areas.

• Expand access to mission-driven capital.

Provide tuition-free technical college for people earning early-childhood education credentials.

Establish federally funded universal pre-kindergarten.

Expand Head Start and Early Head Start enrollment and services.

Set a federal minimum wage standard specifically for child-care workers.

Create a national paid family and medical leave program.

Incentivize companies to add child-care centers when opening factories or offices.

Require sufficiently large new or renovated federal buildings to include child-care centers for staff and community use.

Create a federal incentive program to increase teacher salaries.

Defend IDEA and school services for students with disabilities.

Protect Title I funding for schools serving low-income students.

Make college and trade school more affordable, especially early-childhood certification.

Fully fund Head Start and federal child-nutrition programs.

Simplify federal student-aid processing and create direct qualification pathways for low-income students.

Increase the number of school-based speech therapists, psychologists, and social workers.

Restore the full function of the U.S. Department of Education.

Work to reassert Congress's constitutional power to authorize war.

Work to restore Congress's role in regulating tariffs.

Seek congressional investigation of U.S. naval attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and oppose their continuation.

Seek congressional investigation of how oil revenues from the U.S. operation in Venezuela are being handled.

Call for Congress to reassert control over federal spending and the creation or abolition of agencies.

Seek stronger congressional oversight of cabinet nominees and federal agencies.

Use congressional oversight to restore checks and balances and equal application of the rule of law.

Create expert panels to help draft bills setting federal limits on AI and emerging technologies, with continuing updates.

Require data centers to generate renewable power unless a company proves fossil-fuel generation can be implemented more quickly and cheaply.

Require data centers to pay for grid improvements caused by their electricity use, rather than passing those costs to ratepayers.

Require new data centers to provide local benefits such as grid upgrades, underground lines, or clean community power.

Consider federal minimum distances between data centers and neighborhoods, schools, and senior centers.

Consider creating a federal agency to track jobs affected by AI and assess severance benefits by industry.

Consider a federal ownership stake in AI and using proceeds for citizens and nonprofits.

Consider a national pause on frontier AI training while safeguards are developed.

Encourage local governments to ban or limit automated license-plate cameras.

Consider requiring data-center developers to estimate facility lifespans for host communities.

Consider federal penalties for data centers using water-only cooling systems.

Require a probable-cause warrant for searches of a specific person's location data.

Cap routine surveillance-data retention at a defined number of days unless linked to an active criminal case.

Publish regular public audit logs for surveillance-data searches and agencies using them.

Prohibit surveillance-data searches connected to civil immigration enforcement, reproductive health care, or First Amendment-protected protests.

Bar sharing surveillance data with outside agencies or federal databases without a warrant.

Impose criminal liability and terminate vendor contracts for misuse of private surveillance data.

Favors librarians rather than politicians choosing library books, with parents deciding what their own children read.

Support increased funding for schools and libraries.

Support library programs that improve community health and well-being.

Support library programs that improve literacy, educational outcomes, and student achievement.

Support library services that build workforce skills, social capital, and community engagement.

Promote federal and state policies that give more library support to poorer communities.

Support funding for library Wi-Fi, computers, printers, and community meeting rooms.