Candidate name: Eric Morrison

Party: Democrat

Age: 47

Hometown: Bridgeville

Political experience: Five years as an activist, two years in office.

Professional experience: Educator; Medicare, Medicaid and various state health programs; human resources.

What uniquely qualifies you for this office?

For my first term as state representative, I’m proud of my legislative record, my reputation for excellence in constituent services, keeping constituents informed via various methods and being present in the community. Before being elected, for five years, I worked as a political activist at the state and local levels. Over the years, I’ve held leadership, fundraising and volunteer roles for nonprofits and other community organizations. Also, I believe that my professional experience helps me to understand and address important issues and to assist individual constituents.

What are the top three issues for this office in your view?

I am passionate about many issues. One important issue to me is labor. Everyday, hard-working Delawareans deserve living wages, quality benefits, safe working conditions and the opportunity to obtain the education or training they need to pursue their chosen career paths. Also, I strongly support unions and organized labor. A second important issue to me is education — especially in terms of ensuring that all our children receive the quality education they deserve regardless of learning disabilities, socioeconomic status, race, location, English learner status or how prepared or unprepared they are entering the education system. We must also pay and treat our educators as the qualified professionals they are. A third important issue to me is health care, which I believe is a human right. I am particularly concerned with ensuring that seniors and low-income individuals receive the health care they need. I have a professional background in this area, which helps me with both legislation and individual constituent situations. I’m proud to have worked on, co-sponsored and/or introduced successful legislation in all three of these areas during my first term in office.

What would be your top priority if elected?

It’s hard to isolate one top priority, of course. I think my “top priority” is twofold: first, to continue offering excellent constituent services to help individual residents of the 27th District; and second, to continue working on, fighting for and introducing legislation to benefit everyday, hard-working Delawareans and our most vulnerable, including seniors, minorities, low-income individuals and families, children and veterans — and not special interests.

If you could change one state policy or law, what would it be?

One piece of legislation on which I’ve worked hard over the last two years is legislation that would require paid sick time and safety leave for Delaware workers. America is the only modern nation not to guarantee its workers paid sick time. Fifteen other states and our nation’s capital guarantee paid sick time for workers, and Delaware should join them. (Safety leave refers to paid time off to address domestic violence situations and to escape such situations.) We know from states that have implemented paid sick time laws that they are good for workers, businesses and local economies. Also, paid sick time laws are good for public health. Workers least likely to have paid sick time are workers who earn the least money, making them likely to report to work sick because they cannot afford to take unpaid time off. This is especially true when over half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Also, workers least likely to have paid sick time are workers in industries that are most likely to spread disease by reporting to work sick because they have close contact with people, products and food — including food service, convenience stores, lodging and retail.

What can Delaware do about its workforce issues?

One key thing to do is to ensure that employers are offering living wages and quality benefits. Ironically, some people simply cannot afford to enter the workforce. As one example, day care can be very expensive for some individuals. It simply doesn’t make financial sense for them to take a job when most of that money will go to day care costs. As another example, some individuals relying on social safety net programs to survive may not enter the workforce because of how little money they will make, or they will lose vital health care coverage because an employer offers no health insurance, unaffordable health insurance or health insurance that provides insufficient coverage for the cost. We should also stop corporate handouts to companies and corporations already raking in record profits and that are already happy to open locations in Delaware due to our very favorable tax laws and other existing conditions. Instead, we should focus on helping small businesses and entrepreneurs, especially individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to open their own businesses. Also, the state government — Delaware’s largest employer — has a very large number of job openings. We must raise wages for state workers to be competitive with surrounding states, to which we lose much talent. We are making some progress in this area, but we need to speed up that progress significantly.

What, if any, gun laws would you change?

I think that during our last legislative session, we made some good progress on what I consider to be “commonsense” gun legislation. And we must remember that a majority of Delawareans support this type of gun legislation. One bill we must pass is Senate Bill 3, which addresses issues surrounding handguns, including the creation of a permit-to-purchase process.

How would you protect or change abortion rights in the state?

This past legislative session, I co-sponsored several bills related to protecting a woman’s right to choose and making abortion services more accessible and affordable for all Delaware women. An important next step is to establish funding for abortion services for all Delaware women eligible for Medicaid.

Do you support the State Employee Benefits Committee’s move to a Medicare Advantage plan for state retirees? Why?

I do not support this change. I’ve been contacted by a number of constituents who are state retirees and are understandably very upset about this change. Most concerning to me is my belief that this change was done with very little transparency and without soliciting proper feedback from state retirees, employees and the public at large. State officials have said that this change will go into effect next year no matter what. However, many individuals and groups are organizing around this issue, and a lawsuit has been filed. What will come out of the organizing and lawsuit is unknown, so I am working to educate state retiree constituents about the changes and reminding them to participate in open enrollment, so they do not lose health care coverage as of Jan. 1, 2023.