RINCON — Lisa Ring wants to be at the front of a wave of change sthat he believes the nation needs.

A military spouse and mother of four from Bryan County, Ring is running for the First Congressional District seat currently held by Republican Buddy Carter. She is one of two Democrats in the race. The other is Barbara Seidman of Waycross.

Ring and Seidman will square off in the Democratic primary on May 22.

“The sense has been that momentum is really amazing and growing,” Ring said by telephone after a campaign stop in Savannah on Friday. “We’ve been doing this for nine months and the support that has been shown for this campaign has been amazing. This is the year we are going to make some incredible changes.

“We’re getting out there and talking to everybody in the district to make that happen.”

A Bernie Sanders delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Ring believes lawmakers throughout the U.S. need to address gun violence immediately.

“It seems like something is finally going to be done about the issue,” she said.

Ring’s concerns about gun violence extend beyond mass shootings like the recent one in Parkland, Fla.

“We’re also talking about suicide,” she said. “The suicide rate is actually twice the rate of homicide, so this is an issue that has to be addressed from all different directions.

“It has to be a combination of policy changes — putting in protections like background checks for every gun purchase, which we currently don’t have in the state of Georgia, and limiting high-capacity magazines and just sensible protections for society — as well as doing the research we need to do about gun violence and providing mental health care, and removing the stigma. Also, we need to get the community involved in the problem and solving the problem.”

Like Sanders, Ring is a proponent of Medicare for all Americans.

“In this country, we have been fighting for a universal health care system for more than 100 years,” she said. “It’s an idea whose time has come. It’s time for us to catch up with the rest of the world and provide health care for every person in this country from birth to death — and that’s what Medicare for All does.

“It’s an expansion of Medicare, which is a wildly successful and popular program.”

Ring said medical costs would be reduced by having the federal government serve as the nation’s lone health care administrator.

“I’ve believe it’s about $500 billion (per year) worth of waste that would be cut,” she said. “Medicare for All is a solution that not only saves money but saves lives, and that is a top priority for me.”

Ring is a proponent of a minimum wage of at least $15 per hour and the elimination of “Right to Work” laws that she believes are designed to prevent union organizing and to assist unscrupulous employers in exploiting their workers.

“What we’ve seen is worker rights being eroded in the past few decades,” she said. “We’ve seen wages stagnate since the 1970s so that’s an issue that needs to be fixed. We can’t prosper as working Americans until we address those issues.”

The candidate believes that the tariffs on foreign steel recently proposed by President Donald Trump would be detrimental to American workers.

“It will result in higher prices, reducing industry and reducing jobs in the long run,” she said.