Beth Macy is a bestselling author of deeply reported books about the opioid crisis, globalization, and other forces that have harmed communities in rural America. She grew up poor in small town Ohio and then built her life in Roanoke, Virginia, where for years she reported for the local paper, The Roanoke Times. Now, she’s running for Congress.
Macy is challenging Republican incumbent Ben Cline (VA-6), who voted to support the Republican’s 2025 mega-bill and other Trump administration priorities, like massive tariffs, that have had devastating consequences for rural Virginians. I spoke with Macy about why she’s running for Congress in a district that Trump won by 24 points and what she’s been hearing from her neighbors.
Democracy News: Why are you running for Congress?
Macy: I’m running for Congress so our kids and grandkids don’t grow up in an authoritarian regime. I’m very worried about what’s happened to this country, and I think the Republicans in charge have forgotten who they work for.
I’m just ticked off about how rigged the economy has gotten against working people. I grew up poor. I was the first person in my family to go to college. We have basically taken that opportunity away from most working class kids, and I want to do something about it.
I’m an investigative journalist. I’ve written five books, thousands of newspaper articles. My specialty is holding power to account, and I’m tired of just talking about it. I want to actually do it.
Democracy News: How have you heard people in your district connect political corruption to their daily lives?
Macy: The story that got me most recently is some volunteers were out knocking doors, and there was this farmer who always puts out a Trump sign who asked for a Farmers for Macy sign. When we asked why, she said, “I’m done.” They’re beef farmers. The land has been in her husband’s family for 300 years. She’s a Marine Corp. vet. They’re in their thirties and they have four kids. Her husband had to take a construction job, even though they have a massive cattle farm.
After Ben Cline, my opponent, put out his first campaign ad in which he claims to be reducing gas prices, this farmer was like, “Are you kidding me? I actually have eyeballs, and he can’t gaslight me about gas prices. He can’t claim to care about Epstein files when he’s voted three times against the release.” She described how she and her husband were bothered by the fact that the president, with his stupid little phone, can go tweet that we’re going to help American consumers by importing beef and then they lose significant equity they had in their cows overnight.
We’re out there meeting these people, we’re stepping around their cow patties on their farm, listening to them. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, meet people in their pain, not their politics.
Democracy News: You’re an accomplished journalist. How has talking to people as a political candidate been different or similar to talking to people as a journalist?
Macy: Journalism was a good training ground for this. I’ve always gone out and talked to people working on the ground level, factory workers, people who’ve lost their jobs. For this campaign, we started having themed town halls.
We had four farmer town halls where we met with farmers up and down the districts. Agriculture is the number one industry in the district. During these town halls, I wasn’t giving a stump speech, I wasn’t selling. I was just out there listening to people in barns in 100 degree weather, and it went really well. People said, “Thank you, nobody ever comes out. And by the way, we haven’t had a farm bill passed since 2018. And by the way, the cost of fertilizer has doubled. We can’t get a second crop of hay because of the drought. And Ben Cline won’t answer our calls.”
Then we started doing veterans town halls, because our district has a disproportionately high number of veterans. I asked people how their VA care was. At one point, somebody said, “My husband was a hero in Vietnam. He lost an eye. He saved five members of his platoon. When he came back, he became a lawyer. He helped his whole career help people get their benefits, and now he’s dying. He’s in hospice, and the VA can’t find a hospice bed for him.” She said none of her reps had called her back. It was just like being a reporter, you call who you know, you keep unpeeling the layers of the onion until you can find someone who can help you. A retired Air Force guy, Rear Admiral John Butler, had been out there with me, and he said, “Beth, I got this.” He made calls. And by the end of the day, he’d found this guy a hospice bed.
But that’s what our congressman should have been doing. We were doing Ben Cline’s job for him. Our members of Congress should have really good constituent services. They should not be taking a sledgehammer to the VA. 40,000 people have been let go from the VA because of DOGE. Veterans come up to me at town halls and say things like, “Beth, I can’t sleep at night because I took a life, but every time I go to the VA, there’s somebody new, and I have to tell my story all over again.” That’s just heartbreaking.
Democracy News: What are a few things you would do in Congress to help working people?
Macy: The first thing I did when launching my campaign was I signed on to support Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All. She called me right away, and I was happy to say that if elected, I will co-sponsor that legislation. Medicare for All should be the goal, and because that’s going to take some time, we need to take incremental steps like getting Medicare at 50 or 55 and expanding Medicaid for kids.
Immediately, we have got to get those ACA subsidies back that took millions of people’s healthcare away and that suddenly tripled and quadrupled premiums for a lot of people like freelancers and gig economy workers and small business owners. And a lot of farmers I know don’t have health insurance anymore. Some are driving school buses. They’re leaving the farm in the morning to have other jobs, too, to get health insurance. Farming is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and I absolutely hate for them that some farmers are uninsured.
We also have to end this ridiculous war of choice. We’ve got to get back to a negotiated peace because the war is hurting everyone. The diesel price was almost up to $7 a gallon last week. It’s killing the farmers. It’s killing small businesses. The tariffs are really a double whammy on the small businesses.
Democracy News: How else do you see the influence of money in politics affecting your neighbors?
Hunger is up because of the USDA cuts and the Big Ugly Bill. Hunger in this district is off the charts. I’ve met with both of the food bank directors in the district. I saw they have empty shelves because of the USDA cuts. I asked one director, “How many meals have vanished since the cuts? And she said, “1.1 million meals.” That’s just in one district. You’ve got people sleeping in their cars outside of food pantries, so they can be the first in line in the morning when the pantry opens up because they know the food’s going to run out. That’s because of the USDA cuts.
A couple months ago, I went to a food pantry and I talked to the minister, who said, “We don’t do politics here.” I said I just wanted to see what was happening. Later, he said he’d invited all the local leaders, and I was the only one who showed up. We were a three-minute drive from Ben Cline’s house. But I don’t think he can show up, because I don’t think he wants to see what his votes have caused. $2 trillion out of things like Head Start, Medicaid, housing programs, food, all so that billionaires who want to be trillionaires can, you know, buy an 11th house. Who even wants 11 houses? I just don’t understand why we’re letting all these rich people run everything.
If we got money out of politics, it would help everyone. I’ve taken a pledge that I won’t take any corporate PAC money, that I won’t trade stocks if elected. I believe in ending the revolving door and getting rid of Citizens United, which is just a pox on the country.
The crypto guys just dumped a lot of money into the race to help my opponent. So far, we’ve raised almost 2.7 million total from 26,000 donors. And when you can outraise corporate money with just regular people, that’s not a statistical anomaly. That’s a movement, and that feels really good.
I thought Cassidy H was so brave , if not naïve, during her testimony…she knew her mistake by working for the Trump clown show.. others won’t forgive her for owning up and showing up for WTP