2018 Election

Lindsey Deckard

Senate District 16

Lindsey Deckard

Party: Democratic

Residence: Shelby County

Political experience: None.

Professional experience: Government subcontractor for the military for 15 years in Birmingham; biomedical researcher at UAB for 15 years.

Civic experience: Former member of PTA in Florida; former member of church board of directors in Florida.

Main issues: One of Deckard’s top issues is instituting term limits, which she said help legislators get more work done.

Deckard also wants to see campaign finance reform. “The big donors in our state tend to pick our representatives for us, and then of course, those representatives work for the people with the money who put them in office, and we get left holding the bag,” she said.

Echoing other candidates, Deckard wants to end corruption in Alabama and said that would help solve a host of other problems. “Education, prison reform, tax reform, health care … all of those things we seem to put Band-Aids on because we don’t fix the underlying problem,” Deckard said.

Deckard said she also wants to help lower health care costs and combat health provider monopolies in the state.

Lastly, she said the state must focus on funding public schools instead of private schools.

“In the last five years, $147 million has been siphoned out of the Education Trust Fund … for private school vouchers. … We all voted for public school funding, not private school funding,” she said.