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Southerland Won't Debate Graham, But NPA Candidate Lee Is Ready To Stand In

lutherlee4congress.com

North Florida Congressman Steve Southerland is refusing to debate his Democratic opponent Gwen Graham until negative ads about him stop running, but that doesn’t mean Graham may not get any debate at all.

The write-in candidate for the job, Luther Lee, says he’s willing to take Southerland’s place. Lee says he’s a regular guy, just trying to make a difference.

“I’ve been working class my whole life, he says. "I wasn’t head of a funeral home business worth a million bucks and I didn’t have a father that had been in politics a long time.”

That's a shot at Southerland who owns a funeral home business and Graham, who is the daughter of former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham.

Lee, a no-party affiliation candidate for the second Congressional district, is a manager at the Florida Department of Revenue. If elected, he says he’d defer to voters through local polls and monthly town-hall sessions before casting votes on major issues. But he’s also a realist. Lee says he knows his fight will be tough, as both Graham and Southerland have raised millions of dollars to run.

Follow @HatterLynn

Lynn Hatter is a Florida A&M University and Florida State University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master's in Professional Communication. Lynn has been with WFSU since 2007 with education and health care issues as her key coverage areas.  She has worked with several organizations, including Kaiser Health News.  Lynn has also partnered with USC-Annenberg's Center for Child Wellbeing on the nationally acclaimed series "Committed," which explored the prevalence of involuntary commitment use on children.
She serves on the board of RTDNA and the United Way of the Big Bend, with previous service on the board of the First Amendment Foundation of Florida.

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