Audrey Henson is the latest Republican to enter the race for Florida’s 13^th Congressional District seat based in Pinellas County.

The 31-year-old St. Petersburg native is emphasizing her local roots in distinguishing herself from her GOP opponents in the early going of what should be a fierce battle on both sides of the aisle for this open congressional seat next year.

“I’m running to represent the people who I grew up with. The people I went to school with. The people I go to church with now,” Henson told Spectrum Bay News 9 on Monday.

Henson grew up in the Tyrone Mall area and went to Dixie Hollins High School before attending St. Petersburg College and USF. She was raised by a single-mom in a low-income household.

“And like so many people in Pinellas, my family was no stranger to the opioid epidemic,” she says. “I had parents who struggled with both alcohol and drug abuse, and unfortunately, that trapped my brothers and I into a cycle of poverty.”

A political science major, Henson was able to get an unpaid internship with Senator Marco Rubio’s office while in college, something that she considers herself very lucky to have obtained because “it’s a very rigged, corrupt closed-off system.”

The fact that she had to get a student loan to help her afford working that unpaid internship didn’t make any sense to her, and it ultimately led to the creation of the nonprofit College to Congress in 2016, which strives to even the playing field for congressional interns. Henson says since it was founded, College to Congress been instrumental in helping hundreds of students get careers in public service.

As far as the top issues on her agenda, she talks about concerns about the escalating federal debt, which has increased under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

“When we think about national debt, everyone focuses on how liberals are overspending and yes, they are. But lots of Washington bureaucrats are overspending. And that hurts our national security,” she says.

Along with concerns about inflation and what she says is a rise in socialism, she's also concerned about preserving Social Security.

“I grew up going to nursing homes here,” she says. “Meaning that I have older family here who live on Social Security. They paid into that system. That’s their money. That’s not an entitlement program. They’re worried that with our spending and our debt, that that’s the next bucket of money the Washington bureaucrats are going to try to tap into and try to take.”

President Trump has already weighed in on the GOP primary race. The former president issued a statement last week announcing his “complete and total endorsement” for Anna Paulina Luna, who was the party’s nominee in 2020.

When asked about that, Henson replied that she considers Trump to be “the most successful and impactful conservative president we’ve had in a long time,” and says she was “honored and proud” to have helped him. “I have staffed both his White House and his election campaign, but this race is about Pinellas, and this race is just getting started,” she proclaims.

In her campaign kickoff video and also in conversation, Henson says she’s “not another carpetbagging politician," an apparent shot at Luna and the other major GOP candidate in the race, Amanda Makki. Luna is from Southern California and Makki was born in Iran and raised in Maryland.

Both Republicans responded to the carpetbagging charge by saying that Henson had endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump for president in 2016.

“Audrey Henson’s support for Hillary Clinton over President Trump says more than enough for Republican voters to not take her seriously as a candidate,” said Luna. “I don’t take her comments any more seriously than they do.”

“I can hardly be called a carpetbagger when five Pinellas County mayors just endorsed me in this race,” said Makki. “They know that I understand this community and this district and I’m the only candidate in the Republican primary who has spent the last six years learning the issues and working with leaders in our community. Furthermore, no one can call themselves a conservative candidate when they supported Hillary Clinton or, in the case of Anna Paulina Luna, who ‘avidly’ supported Barack Obama.” (the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2020 that Luna wrote in a since removed blog post that she called herself a “two-time avid supporter of Obama,” but said that she never voted for him).

Henson responded on Monday night with this statement about the charge of supporting Clinton in 2016.

"President Trump delivered the single greatest term as a conservative President in history. 10 million more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016, and I was proud to be part of those who recognized that his administration delivered on every campaign promise. That's why I'm running - to make sure there's a conservative who actually wins this seat and delivers for the people of Pinellas County."

On the Democratic side, state representatives Michele Rayner and Ben Diamond have already announced their candidacies, as has Eric Lynn, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.

The seat leaned Democratic in terms of party representation by about 4.6 percentage points as of last November's election, but it's expected to become more Republican-friendly once the GOP-led Legislature redraws it up over the next several months. The first committee meeting on redistricting was held in the Senate on Monday afternoon in Tallahassee.