Meet Lynn Gerson

I'm Lynn Gerson, and I'm running to represent District 5 on the Beaufort County Council.

I was eight years old when I fell in love with politics. I walked into John F. Kennedy's campaign headquarters and asked for a hologram pin — JFK's face on one side, “The man for the 60s” on the other. I walked home clutching it in my fist. When I later heard Kennedy say, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” I took it to heart. Public service became my lifelong passion.

That passion grew from the values I learned in Elyria, Ohio, a working-class city that taught me community, hard work, and service to others. My immigrant grandparents, who escaped the brutality of then-Russian-ruled Ukraine, and my parents instilled in me a belief that each of us has a duty to leave things better than we found them.

I've spent a lifetime in the trenches, and I thrive on it. At 17, I knocked on doors to help lower the voting age to 18. After moving to San Diego, I served as my neighborhood's Get Out the Vote lead, sat on the organizing committee for the first Women's March, and was the county outreach contact for Delaine Eastin's gubernatorial campaign.

Alongside my activism, I built a 35-year legal career specializing in workers' compensation law, spending my final 14 years as a litigation manager overseeing a statewide panel of 176 attorneys that I built from the ground up. My guiding principle was simple: always do the right thing at the right time.

I moved to Bluffton in March 2022 and quickly threw myself into civic life, becoming vice president and then president of Democrats of Sun City, a role I still hold today. Community service remains central to who I am — from raising funds for the Ronald McDonald House and climbing in 9/11 Stair Climbs for First Responders to serving meals to neighbors in need and collecting food for Bluffton Self Help. These experiences continue to inspire my commitment to serve the residents of District 5 and all of Beaufort County.