SCOOP: Main Street Caucus debuts new video Spotlight Series with profile of Rep. Laurel Lee
Get to know Rep. Laurel Lee — including what obscure language she took in college — like you've never known her before!
Reps. Mike Flood (R., Neb.) and Laurel Lee (R., Fla.) are the new leadership of the House Republicans’ Main Street Caucus — and the duo is hitting the ground running; they are launching a new video series so that people in both Washington, D.C. and back home can learn more about what makes the members of the Main Street Caucus tick.
In the first episode, obtained by the Washington Reporter, Flood asks Lee about everything ranging from what made her run for office to what obscure language she took in college (hint: it’s spoken almost exclusively in Ghana).
Prior to her tenure in Congress, Lee served as a prosecutor in the Tampa area, as a State Court judge, and as Florida’s Secretary of State.
“I’m [also] a mom, and that was another thing that, for me, was a significant call to action,” she told Flood. “In the history of Congress, we’ve had a little over 400 women serve in the House of Representatives, and fewer than half of those have been Republicans. So for me, it was also important to think about what were we showing to the next generation of young women and girls. I wanted them to see themselves represented in Congress.”
Lee, who now represents what she calls the “winter strawberry capital of the world,” is relying heavily on her background as a judge and as a prosecutor in her newish day job.
She works “a lot on criminal justice policy, as you might expect, and really believe that in Congress, we have a responsibility to follow the law make sure that we’re prosecuting and dealing with repeat violent offenders at the same time, recognize that not everybody fits that description, and there are many people who will come back out into our communities, and we should be actively working on smart criminal justice policy that keeps those incarcerated who need to be but also gives that second chance in a real way to the people who are coming back to our communities,” she said. “That’s good for them. It’s good for our communities. That’s really another equally important part of public safety.”
She is also working a lot on cybersecurity and infrastructure. “I really enjoy and care a lot about working on tech policy and things that relate to our national security and infrastructure,” Lee said. “I have been a part of a number of bills that were related to CISA within the Department of Homeland Security…I [also] got to be part of our Artificial Intelligence Task Force in Congress.”
Lee’s cybersecurity focus, she explained, “goes back all the way to my time as a prosecutor, but interestingly, I also spent the majority of my time as Secretary of State working on issues related to infrastructure and cybersecurity. There I had some clearances. I worked a lot with federal law enforcement, and really got exposed to the kinds of threats that we face from foreign adversaries that are very real.”
But Lee also wanted to bring Florida’s conservative values to D.C. — and that also explains why she wanted to join Main Street in the first place. “Over that course of time, I developed a real appreciation for the significance of public policy. We do a lot of things right in Florida. We balance our budget, we have a strong economy, we have great, secure elections. There’s so much that we’re doing that, I thought we could really bring to Congress.”
Lee, a self-proclaimed “lifelong Republican,” said that “basic conservative values were very important to me,” and when she was elected to Congress, she decided that she “wanted to be part of a caucus in a group that was focused on getting things done and actually making a difference for the people we represent.”
“When I spent some time with Main Street,” she said, “that’s absolutely what I saw there. We have some of the most talented members anywhere on the Hill, but also a group that’s committed to trying to do the things that aren’t just right in the moment, but right for our country, right for the communities we represent.”
Finally, Flood also extracted a fun fact about Lee that did not exist anywhere on the internet: while in college, Lee decided to learn a foreign language. Not Spanish, but actually the Akuapem Twi dialect that is spoken in Ghana.
“In college,” she said, “I realized somewhat late that I had not satisfied the language requirement and needed to study a language rather intensely in order to graduate. And so that summer, the University of Florida was offering a course in a language called Akuapem Twi….And so I studied all summer this language; the professor was Ghanaian, so in addition to teaching us the language, he also spent time sharing with us. He called them spider stories, the stories of his grandmother and his mother that really taught us about community and taught folklore.”
While Spanish certainly would have been easier, it is clear that Lee is always up for a challenge — especially, it seems, one infused with Ghanaian folklore and culture.