Editor’s note (OK, writer’s note): Last night I announced my candidacy for Congress at the storied Fire Station No. 1 in Roanoke, a hallowed space where Obama and FDR once spoke. To tee me up, my minister friend Dr. Rev. Bill Lee spoke, as did the rousing Dr. Brenda Hale, Mayor Joe Cobb, health-care hero Cheri Hartman, that red-to-blue seat-flipping Delegate-elect Lily Franklin, and the inimitable Shenandoah factory worker/farmer Andrew Tait.
Tait spoke about feeling left behind, economically and culturally. He had taken a half-day off work to drive with his longtime partner and their kids down from Mt. Jackson—and then wouldn’t let me reimburse him for expenses. He had not a single notecard on the podium. His delivery was so breathtaking, you could hear a pin drop between his sentences.
To practice, he had spent the past two weeks reciting the speech aloud on his forklift at the factory.
Tait, pictured below and the subject of a recent Substack of mine, has the soul of a poet and a work ethic to match that of his partner, a fifth-generation farmer. My heartfelt thanks to all the speakers and to the 400-plus people who turned out for the event, my amazing volunteers (one supporter baked ten dozen chocolate chip cookies; my hairdresser gave me a free blowout!), the people who stood outside in the overflow area patiently listening and cheering me on, and my four-decades-long community of readers. I love y’all.
Welcome to the worst-kept secret in Roanoke: My name is Beth Macy, and I’m running for Congress!
I have spent my entire professional career giving a voice to the voiceless, putting a face to the forgotten, and holding those who abuse power to account. Those of us in the Sixth District (or whatever it may become) deserve a representative who will fight for all the people of our region. The time has come to say ENOUGH to Ben Cline and all the ways he serves Donald Trump, and I need your help.
It’s fitting that we gather tonight in this very special space, TXTUR, where the furniture you’re sitting on is not only made in America but it’s made right here in Roanoke with sustainable materials. My first book was “Factory Man,” which documented the negative impacts of global trade policy on rural America in general and Virginia’s furniture-makers in particular. I was the first writer to show how people were suffering from the aftermath of globalization, even though Republicans and Democrats alike had promised that the rising tide would lift all boats. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
It just lifted a lot of yachts
You may also know that I wrote two more books and co-wrote a Hulu miniseries about the corporate moguls who, a few years after NAFTA blasted into our towns, screwed us again by dumping a deluge of opioids in the very same places.
Our cities, towns, and rural communities have borne the brunt of these cruel policies. Folks feel left behind—because they have been. The time has come to say enough to shaming and blaming the victims. It’s time instead to hold politicians who abuse power to account.
I’ve spent most of my life writing about regular folks left behind by the system: The veteran who died because he didn’t get adequate treatment for his PTSD. A girl from the projects who, held up by the Gainsboro Library and a single mom who worked her tail off—and they’re here with us tonight. Salena Sullivan went to HARVARD and now runs a library.
In other words, I give a voice to the people Ben Cline won’t lift a finger for.
Those who rightly feel duped by a president who promised the world and delivered a Dumpster. Who brought us skyrocketing inflation fueled by his wily-nily tariffs. Who is OK with women going without their mammograms because they can’t pay their health care premiums. Who even gives pedophiles a pass
So what do I stand for?
At a billionaire’s party, Kurt Vonnegut once pointed out to his pal Joseph Heller that their hedge-funder host earned more money in a single day than Heller earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22, over its entire history.
To which Heller replied, “Yes, but I have something he will never have—ENOUGH.”
•••
I’m running for Congress because decent, grown-ass people should know when they have enough. I’m running for Congress to make sure the oligarch class pays its fair share—instead of lobbying for tax breaks delivered by bought-off politicians like Ben Cline and paid for on the backs of Medicaid and food stamp recipients, the large majority of whom are working hard and still can’t keep their heads above water.
When Silicon Valley CEOs monetize our likes and hearts online to buy islands while addicting our kids to their phones, they should know that, all right already, they have enough.
Elon Musk got a trillion—that’s A TRILLION WITH A T—a trillion-dollar bonus because he never has enough.
Jeff Bezos got millions in tax breaks so he can keep jetting off into space because he never has enough.
Donald Trump is building himself a golden palace because HE never has enough.
Well, you know who HAS had enough? The voters of the 6th District have had enough! We’ve had enough of a raw deal. We’ve had enough of working too hard and too long for too little. Ben Cline has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from giant corporations, including Big Pharma and their lobbyists in Washington, because EVEN HE doesn’t have enough.
And it’s time we say to Ben Cline, [say it with me]: ENOUGH.
• • •
I know the world of the working class intimately. I grew up in a small town — one of the poorest kids in my class. I’ve eaten my fair share of government cheese, felt the raw pain and shame of family addiction and utility cut-off notices. My dad returned home from World War II to become a serially unemployed (and alcoholic) housepainter while my feisty, frugal and whipsmart Mom held our family together – working at a factory when the economy was good and picking up under-the-table jobs when it wasn’t. I went to college at the tail-end of the war on poverty, when it was still possible for a promising poor kid to have their college paid for solely by Pell grants.
That forward-thinking government help—which I’ve paid back many times over— saved my life. Today, that same grant only covers 30 percent of a state-college tuition. And we all know why that is—because of greed.
What we have today is a crisis of opportunity. We all know and have younger family members and friends who feel like the American dream has become a pipe dream.
I’ll fight to bring good, life-sustaining jobs to our communities so people don’t have to choose between taking their medicine and buying food. I’ll support investments in job training, apprenticeship programs, fully funded Pell grants, and free community college—places that should be training hubs for the jobs of tomorrow, especially with AI about to upend the very notion of work.
Right now, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. That’s been in place for the longest period in history without an update. As your congresswoman, I will fight like hell to raise the minimum wage.
In small towns across America, employers tell me that many workers aren’t stable enough to show up regularly for work, largely because of mental health and substance-use disorders. I’ll fight to expand access to Medicaid—not gut it.
Let me be clear: Medicaid is not a hand-out; it’s a hand-up. It’s the least we can do as a society to make sure parents and children have an opportunity to live, work, and to contribute.
Next year in Virginia, our Medicaid program will fall short by $3.4 billion dollars. Next year, 350,000 Virginians are predicted to lose their health care.
But this isn’t some far-off abstraction: Three rural health clinics in Virginia’s sixth district have already shuttered this year. In the richest country in the world, in the year of our Lord 2025, folks are losing access to life-or-death care.
Are we gonna stand by as our rural hospitals close too? No. Say it again: ENOUGH. I will not let our beloved Shenandoah Valley become a place where women can’t get to a hospital in time for a delivery or heart attack patients don’t survive long ambulance rides.
Ben Cline votes for changes that are making us sicker and making life harder for our employers, workers and their kids. He’s voted to cut special ed programs and Head Start, to reduce school guidance counselors, to slash critical funding for scientific research, including at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute right here in Roanoke.
Recently, Isabel Thornton, a local affordable housing leader, asked Ben Cline not to cut the HUD funding she relied on to build desperately needed lower-cost units so she could reduce the number of homeless people in our city. His response? He didn’t even know what that program did. Do your homework, Ben! Do your job!
Cline not only votes in lockstep with Trump on every issue, his coffers are lined by the very corporations that poisoned our kids.
For more than 20 years, he’s taken donations from Abbott Laboratories, a company that knowingly sent 300 sales reps out into our communities to spew the lie that OxyContin was only addictive in “less than one percent of all cases.”
While Cline also took donations from the likes of SpaceX, Merck, the makers of Juul vaping products, and a big pharma PAC that is his biggest donor of all—I wrote the book on what big pharma was doing wrong. I told readers the heart-wrenching story of Tess Henry, a 26-year-old South Roanoke native who went from prescribed pills to heroin to homelessness. Her lifeless body ended up in the bottom of a Dumpster on Christmas Eve.
More than 2.6 million Americans are now addicted to opioids. The largest city in Ben Cline’s district—that would be right here in Roanoke—still has one of the highest overdose rates in Virginia. Meanwhile, Cline focuses only on what Trump and his billionaire overlords tell him to—scapegoating immigrants and trans people.
Here’s the deal: They’re trying to scare you about bathrooms when they should be making sure you can eat, work, and heal.
Hear me when I say this: I am not promising my vote in Congress to any president or any party. What I promise is that I’ll stand up for the working people of our communities who need a voice.
I’ll do my homework, I’ll take notes — it’s kind of a compulsion of mine—and I won’t be captured by big money interests.
• • •
Last week I spoke to Allison Greeley, a Roanoke hairdresser. She was worried sick about her premiums skyrocketing at the end of the year. While Cline himself relies on affordable Congressional health care, he voted with Trump to scrap the ACA subsidies Allison relies on, a move that will cause her premiums to go from $198 to $1,200 a month.
Sit with that for a moment: That’s a monthly increase of six times. What small business owner can afford that?
When the government shutdown revealed how many people would be negatively impacted by the loss of the ACA subsidies, Ben Cline stood silent, hidden away in his office (just like he does between noon and 1 every Monday), showing a profound disregard for his own constituents.
I won’t stand by while useful idiots like Ben Cline and other MAGA Republicans in Washington make life unbearable for people like Allison.
I won’t stand by while tech moguls push us deeper into our silos, addicting our children, poisoning our communities—all so they can buy a fifth mansion.
Last week Trump bragged that Walmart had cut the price of its Thanksgiving meal baskets by 25 percent as “proof” that costs were going down in his economy. The price actually went down because Walmart had to reduce the number of items in the baskets to hold down the costs, thanks largely to price increases caused by Trump’s tariffs. Guys, propaganda is not a strategy.
Mark Twain wrote that a lie travels halfway across the world before the truth can get its boots on. These days the truth can’t even get out of bed.
• • •
As I wrote in my new book, Paper Girl, America needs to get back to what binds us together – not our politics, but our shared values. Our love of country. Our love for our neighbors, ALL our neighbors. Look around this room:
I see teachers, farmers, veterans, businesspeople, healthcare providers, religious leaders, furniture-makers, factory workers, students. Y’all, we have to get back to taking care of each other. We have to put our communities before billionaires.
I’ve been a Roanoker for 36 years. I love that we’re “West of Richmond,” as the song goes, huddled up against the Appalachian mountains and far from the halls of power. Up and down I-81, along the beauty of Route 11, people are yearning for real representation in Congress.
I pledge right here and now to visit every county in the district, red or blue, to do the same thing I’ve been doing as a reporter for four decades. To LISTEN. And believe me, I will be taking notes.
I’m doing this not because I want to be a politician, but because I’m worried that our American democracy—the idea that gives voice, opportunity and freedom to all; that once represented a light around the world—is at serious risk. If we don’t stand for democracy now, we may very well lose it.
This race is for you, and it’s about you. So I promise to listen to everyone, to learn, and to represent ALL the people. It is by giving all people a voice–not just the rich and powerful–that we can hope to become a More Perfect Union.
But I need you. If we remain divided, the powerful will always keep us down. Together, we can make our part of Virginia better for the growing number of struggling people. I’m asking you to join me in fighting for each other, for our kids, and for the future of every Virginian in the sixth District.
• • •
Lastly, I want to thank my KTT—my kitchen table team—the people who convinced me that this paper girl, someone who grew up on government cheese, had the chops to reach for one of the most important offices in our land. With a few exceptions, the KTT is damn-near all women: Kate Berding, Barbara Andes, Beth Deel, Shannon Latkin Anderson, Carole Tarrant, Dina Imbriani, Suzanne and Ben Bazak, Alice Burlinson, Sarah Goodman, Catherine Koebel-Stromberg, Meg Lemmond, Karen Martin, Andrea Pitzer, Ty McEachern, Annemie Tonken, Quinn Graeff, Morgan Pavelka, Libba Wolfe, Jen and Carter Brothers.
And of course, let’s lift a glass to that updraft underneath my armpits – my husband, Tom Landon. I’m not gonna lie, he didn’t initially love the idea of my running for office just when I promised him that I would start slowing down. Then came the passage of Trump and Cline’s disastrous OBBB, the rounding up of immigrants, the arresting of journalists—my tribe!—and our mutual fear of what might happen to our kids if things keep getting worse.
One night, over beers in our backyard, Tom looked at me and, in language that’s not quite fit to print, he said, “Let’s do it. Let’s take that em-effer down.” And that, friends, is exactly what we’re here to do—to replace their failed, predatory policies with a fairer, more common sense and just version of America.
Join me as we take on Ben Cline and his corporate funders to create a more perfect union. Because we’ve all had–what have we had?—ENOUGH
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