View of the Blue Ridge Mountains from Ravens Roost, where a soliatary tree stands alone at the cliff's edge.
Now that we’re over a month post election, and I’ve somewhat recovered, I’ve gathered a few thoughts regarding the entire cycle. Full disclosure, this is most likely going to be snippet of a larger work, but for now, this is what I need to get off of my chest, especially considering how close we are to the beginning of Virginia’s legislative session.
I’m well aware of how much there is that I don’t know. Even after a year of involvement, I’m still learning (newsflash - that’s a good thing to admit). I went into this process with local government experience and a bachelor’s degree in political science under my belt, but neither one prepares you adequately for the absolute gauntlet that is running for state office. If you’ve done it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, it’s about 10 times more grueling than you can imagine. The hardest parts aren’t the constant spotlight or the 24/7 content generation mill or even the persistent lack of sleep, though. It’s how the people treat you, the folks who are supposedly on your side, that really runs you into the ground.
Throughout the entire campaign, I was consistently aware of my own shortcomings. Some of them were obvious - from the jump, I’d known that the ideal Democratic candidate for many in my district would be a white male in his late 50s to early 60s, one who was a decorated Marine, one who owned his own business, whether that be a law firm or a restaurant. This ideal candidate would have over a decade of legislative experience, would be six foot two, and have a smoking hot blonde wife twenty years his junior that brought great personal wealth of her own. Said candidate would live in a five bedroom household that would be elegant yet still somewhat modest in appearance, you know, to relate to the middle class (said house would cost over half a million dollars, of course). Finally, the ideal candidate would be a doting grandfather and possess a fierce yet adorably marketable German Shepherd that went everywhere with him on the campaign trail. He’d also be a former Republican that only switched parties because he hated Trump, because that really gets the resistlibs to start dropping their panties for some reason.
Obviously, that wasn’t me. I was a 25 year old queer black woman from a tiny town who had to learn everything from public speaking to the basics of votebuilder on the fly. I grew up in a less than 900 sq ft house, taught myself to drive in a $400 car (and subsequently taught myself how to repair it), and I’m all too aware of the intricacies of applying for assistance. I work in the food service industry, I write incredibly niche genre fiction, I’m only 5’3, and I don’t even have a fish (may my betta Alka Sherman Seltzer rest in peace), let alone a cool marketable dog. I’ve also been a Democrat since I was an embryo, so there’s no fun come to Jesus story there either.
The disappointment from many, no matter how much they tried to hide it, was so palpable that you could cut it like a xan cake. I’d go to events, often my own, and people would ask if I was a volunteer, or an intern, or on one particularly annoying occasion if I was lost. Attendees would ask “where is the candidate? I’d love to meet him,” and I’d have to let them know that she’s standing right in front of them. They’d blush and laugh it off, but the active disappointment in their eyes is something I’ll never forget.
It actually became a running gag to have volunteers pretend to be me while I wandered off to mingle or use the facilities or take a rare moment of solitude, something that became more and more treasured as the campaign approached its conclusion. We didn’t have to do much of anything to get folks to believe it - whether it was a teenager in a blazer or one of my silver haired volunteers or even my own girlfriend, who has no interest in politics aside from whatever fresh hell I subject her to, people would overlook me every time.
I’m sharing this not only because it’s humorous, but because it was a microcosm of what was happening at the party level as well. My voice, despite being what so many people claim we need - you know, a person of color, queer, younger than 73 - seemed effectively worthless, just based on my zipcode (side note, 24555 is one of the sickest numeric sequences out there, and no I won’t be taking any questions or comments). Because I was a Democrat running in a rural area, one so red it might as well be affirmative action for Republicans who’d never be able to make the grade elsewhere, I was seen as useless, disregardable, and not worth the easiest, bare minimum forms of support. I wasn’t asking for thousands of dollars!
Of course there were the “thank you for running”s spoken quickly in furtive whispers before the speaker would rush off to schmooze with more important folks, and yes, some people did take my words to heart, only to repeat them right back to me and thousands of others as if they’d come up with them (this happened on two separate occasions, mind you). Quite a bit of lip service was thrown my way, and it was all so appallingly transparent that I’m surprised some of the folks responsible even bothered.
I’m not knocking the good work that was done in my district, don’t get me wrong. I owe groups like Rural GroundGame, the Roanoke Young Democrats, and local Democratic Committees like Lexington-Rockbridge, Waynesboro, and Staunton my entire life, and I don’t know that I can ever express my gratitude enough for them. There were also the hundreds of phone bankers, texters, post card writers, donors, and other volunteers who sacrificed their time and money so we could give voters a real choice, one that empowered them, one that might make them more likely to vote in every election, not just the presidential (you know, elections like the 2021 gubernatorial, where a couple more votes in the Shenandoah Valley might have meant Glenn Youngkin would have remained as notable as Ken Cuccinelli, if anyone remembers that piece of work).
If it weren’t for what happened to candidates like Lily Franklin, I might be more forgiving, chalking it up to people being turned off by my particular brand of personality - the type that knows all of this is just window dressing for people who think they’re more important than they really are. AKA, I like to make jokes! I dress like a working class 25 year old - I don’t intend on entertaining anyone’s black (wo)man in a suit fetish. I like to have a fruity little drink and I prefer hugs and high fives over handshakes and those weird little nods men do at each other. Again, I know that’s a turn off for many liberals, and I don’t forgive them for it but I understand it. However, we saw the way Franklin’s race was disregarded as well, and she was one of the best candidates this entire cycle. She did everything right. I consider her a role model in the way she worked to make a district originally rated as a longshot into one that she would have WON, if only the establishment had taken her efforts as seriously as they did the twitter musings of random pundits. Again, rural Virginia was written off, even when it WAS winnable for Democrats.
All of this hurts, of course. I think folks are vastly underestimating the sort of damage this behavior does to candidates and to the people that worked so hard to win these districts. I can only speak for myself, but my sense of self worth was near non-existent during the latter half of the campaign, and it wasn’t the fault of the Republicans - believe it or not, the Republicans I encountered often treated me far better than members of the so called “vote blue no matter who” squad. By the end of September, my thoughts were less of the “drop out” variety and more of the “drop dead” sort. Here I was, killing myself daily driving back and forth across a district the size of Puerto Rico to try and say “hey, rural Virginia has needs that aren’t being met!” and it was as if I was just pissing into the wind. Because I could not win, the response told me, my voice did not matter. What really ached was the realization that by extension, that meant that the voices of those in the 3rd, because they too had been drawn into a non-competitive district, did not matter either.
That meant that those fighting for unions in Stuart’s Drafts factories didn’t matter. Those fine folks fighting for body cameras for Augusta County’s police force didn’t either. All the families in Covington who wanted greater economic development could kick rocks. People in Staunton and Waynesboro who had nowhere to live due to skyrocketing costs and little housing supply might as well pitch a tent, because they weren’t worth listening to either. If you were suffering from addiction in Rockbridge County, you ought to sit down and suffer in silence. The citizens of Botetourt and Craig Counties who’d been brushed off, belittled, and ignored by their delegate might as well take down their website and start selling their land because the trail was coming in whether they liked it or not. And all those folks in Roanoke County, who’d been on the frontline in the battle against a transphobic, authoritarian school board for months, who’d been berated, harassed, threatened, and even arrested? They should all pack up and move to the land of milk and honey, Prince William County.
This all naturally led to a deep sense of resentment, of disillusionment, one that has not dissipated, evident from this article’s existence. But I’m not here to just complain. One quality that I’ve always maintained as part of my values is that if something is wrong, identify it but also work towards a solution. I can’t rely on anyone else to do it for me, and we can’t expect anyone else to do it for us. That’s how I live my daily life, that’s why I ran for office, and that’s why I’m asking Democratic leadership from Alexandria to Virginia Beach to prove me wrong - help us, help rural Virginians, help ourselves, even when the district boundaries don’t allow us to (and for Christ sake, let someone from west of the Blue Ridge onto the redistricting commission next go round - there was no one last time!).
Session starts in a matter of weeks. If Virginia Democrats are serious, they need to buckle up, take a ride down 81, and talk to community leaders, the real ones doing the hard work, not just the Republicans. We need to see leadership put their money where their mouth is and deliver for those who carried the Democratic torch for them in these tough districts, and we need to see them offering those very same people a seat at the table. And please don’t do it as a stepping stone to run for higher office - we can tell who's being authentic and who is donor fishing, thank you very much. We know the issues, we know what we need, and we can advocate for ourselves - we’ve been doing it the entire time. It’s up to everyone else to open their ears and listen.
