Fern Leard is a NEPA native, mother of twins, and long-time healthcare advocate. She was raised by a single mom, her grandmother, as well as foster parents. Having had to move around in her youth, she experienced life in the projects, the suburbs, and rural areas. She fell in love with the back mountain and chose to put down roots and raise her family in Luzerne County and never looked back.
Fern entered the workforce after graduating high school with honors. She washed dishes, waited tables, tended bar, and eventually ended up in the financial sector where she held a variety of positions. After her twins were born with a rare disease, she decided that she wanted to help people and transitioned into working in healthcare. She earned her Nurse Aide Certification at Marywood University and spent nearly a decade working in pediatrics as well as in the elderly community.
Fern’s political journey began when a health insurance company denied an essential part of her sons’ treatment and she began to advocate for a bill in Congress that would mandate coverage for Medicare patients. After a decade of navigating the political process, that bill passed with huge bipartisan support and now millions of Americans have access to the necessary preventative care they need.
Fern is a strong advocate in the fight against food insecurity and has been working with low-income families as well as the often-ignored homeless population in our area. She also advocates for universal school meals and fair funding to all our schools to allow equal opportunity to all our students. Fern knows that local businesses are the backbone of our communities and wants to strengthen them instead of giving large corporations big tax breaks.
Fern Leard currently serves on The Luzerne County Democratic Party Executive Committee and is committed to using her experience to serve the people in Pennsylvania’s 120th House District as our State Representative. Together we can strengthen our communities and build a better life for all Pennsylvanians.
ENDORSEMENTS
ISSUES
Private healthcare decisions do not belong between you and your state legislature and Fern Leard will work diligently to protect our personal liberties.
Fern supports the full range of reproductive healthcare and opposes any effort to restrict or ban access to safe and legal procedures. She is deeply concerned about the harmful impact of leaving personal healthcare decisions in the rotating hands of a state government that changes members every 2 years.
For decades, the government was removed from pregnancy decisions but the Supreme Court recently handed that decision to 50 different legislative bodies then told us it was less government.  It isn’t.
Accessible, affordable, and appropriate healthcare is a fundamental right, and Fern Leard has been advocating for fair coverage for over a decade. Her sons were born with a rare disease, and the lack of insurance coverage for a main component of their care gave her the resolve to take up this fight. She knows the system, and the roadblocks, and she would be honored to advocate for Pennsylvanians to have accessible, improved, quality healthcare.
All Pennsylvania public school students deserve an excellent quality education that isn’t dependent on their zip code. We can provide our students with the foundation they need to move on to higher education or compete in the workforce after they graduate. Investing in our children is never the wrong thing to do.
Fern wants to help locally owned businesses and small family farms that help sustainable jobs stay in the area for generations. The decades of focusing on attracting big corporations with tax breaks hasn’t worked in our favor. The tax breaks should be going to the small local businesses that build up our local economy and strengthen our communities as well as our local farms that also have a direct impact on our health. They are the ones giving back to us taxpayers.
Legalizing recreational marijuana has had a substantial increase in revenue for the 24 states that have already legalized it. Pennsylvania can use the financial benefit to meet our needs by putting tax dollars from legal weed into non-discretionary funds that can be used for our property taxes, our public education, our elderly population, and finally provide our veterans with the essential eye and dental care they should never have been without. It is imperative that the funds be non-discretionary so they cannot be spent anywhere else.
Legalizing marijuana will have a fast impact on all of us and give us the financial relief we’ve long needed.
GET INVOLVED
Paid for by Friends of Fern Leard
