A veteran, an educator, and a neighbor who has spent her whole life in service to others — now ready to serve the 7th District.
“None of us is always right. We make mistakes — but I always endeavor to do the right thing.”
Karen Heriot has never been a politician, and she's proud of it. Commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army after graduating from Wheaton College, she served with the 3rd of the 7th Air Defense Artillery — an I-HAWK missile battalion stationed on the East German border at the height of the Cold War.
She came home to the classroom and stayed for 37 years, teaching in public schools across Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. In 2018 her neighbors elected her to the Seminole County Soil & Water Conservation District board, where she now serves as Chairman. For forty years — in uniform, in the classroom, and in office — she has lived up to the public trust.
portrait · 4:5From the Army to the classroom to the campaign trail — the throughline has always been service.
Upon graduating from Wheaton College, Karen was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. She served with the 3rd of the 7th Air Defense Artillery — an I-HAWK missile battalion on the East German border during the Cold War.
Karen spent 37 years teaching in public schools across Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida — learning firsthand how federal, state, and district policy actually land on students, parents, and teachers.
In 2018, Seminole County voters elected Karen to the Soil & Water Conservation District board, where she serves as Chairman. There she learned, from the Natural Resource Conservation Service, how to sit down with people and ask what their priorities really are.
Now Karen is running for Congress to bring four decades of service, discipline, and Florida common sense to the House — and to be a representative who answers to the people of the 7th, not the party bosses.
portrait · 4:5The lesson Karen was taught decades ago has stayed with her: none of us is always right. We make mistakes — but the measure of a leader is the discipline to do the right thing anyway. It's the qualification she believes sets her apart, and she's lived up to that public trust for forty years.
She also believes the job is to listen. From her work with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, Karen learned to sit down with people and ask what their priorities are. “Yes, we need a strong president who leads,” she says, “but the Constitution charges us to represent the people of the district.”
As your member of Congress, Karen will make herself accessible — holding regular town hall meetings across Seminole and Volusia counties to ask constituents, directly, what matters most to them.
Before the president took office, he asked — more than once — why American students rank 40th out of 40 nations while we spend more per child than any country on earth. Karen was, in her words, “crazy enough to answer the question.”
“We cannot remain a superpower unless we educate our children — and retrain the workers displaced by AI and autonomous vehicles.”
In a 25-page response, Karen laid out how federal law, state law, and district policy work against one another in our schools. It isn't a finished blueprint, she's quick to say — it's the start of a serious conversation, written by someone who actually stood at the front of a classroom for nearly four decades.
Her view: real reform means rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — and doing it right requires members of Congress who genuinely understand how schools work.
If her story is your story, chip in today and help send a veteran and a teacher to Washington.
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