Virginia’s sixth congressional district has been in Republican hands for over 33 years, but Beth Macy, a longtime reporter with the Roanoke Times and author of Dopesick, a powerful account of the opioid crisis that swept through Appalachia two decades ago, has a plan to change that.
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that → sweep → that
The plan, drawing on her experience as a reporter, is to canvass the district in the mountainous west of the state, knocking on doors, going to food pantries, meeting with veterans.
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plan → draw → veterans
It’s what any political hopeful might do, but with a twist: Macy carries her reporter’s notebook and jots down the good stories she’s been told.
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she → ’ → stories
One came at a recent fundraiser: two couples whose land had been in the family for 300 years approached Macy to tell her that a datacenter had been proposed on land next door.
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datacenter → come → land
Macy does an intro to camera: “Hey I’m Beth and I’m running for Congress.
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I → do → Congress
Then they tell their stories that then get posted on social media.
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that → tell → media
“It’s been really effective because it show the real issues that people care about and people who are independent or moderate Republican who are maybe changing their mind and starting to cross over …” she says.
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she → show → mind
“If it’s enough, I don’t know.”
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I → ’ → ?
Macy has challenged Republican congressman Ben Cline, who was elected by nearly 30 points in 2024, to three debates ahead of November’s vote.
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who → challenge → vote
Cline agreed to participate in three, but then appeared to limit them to something less – candidate forums.
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Cline → agree → something
Macy told her former paper that amounted to “a chicken-you-know-what response”.
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you → tell → response
Many races in this cycle have been upended or at least complicated by the datacenter debate.
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races → upend → debate
Three hours to the north-east of Roanoke lies Loudon county, the data processing heart of the US.
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county → lie → US
But this is farm county, typically Republican, and farmers are being buffeted by high diesel prices and fertilizer costs as well as the loss of immigrant workers. .
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farmers → buffet → workers
A sign on a country road to Glasgow, 30 miles north of Roanoke, read: “Farmers for Beth Macy: Protect Family Farms, Stop Data Centers.”
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sign → read → Centers
Democrats hope Macy can pull of an upset win despite Virginia’s state supreme court striking down a voter-approved re-districting plan that would have helped the party.
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that → hope → party
The decision has energized Democrats locally and with the political mood across the US turning against incumbents – but especially Republicans – Macy could pull it off.
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Macy → energize → it
In the first, the public were told Oxycontin prescribed for pain relief was not addictive, only to find it was.
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it → tell → relief
In the second, data centers may be being foisted on the public without sufficient knowledge of their consequences to water and electricity supplies.
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centers → foist → supplies
“It’s the idea that this thing was done to people without their knowledge,” Macy says, pointing to the construction of a multi-building data center campus on a 312-acre site in Botetourt county, Virginia.
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Macy → ’ → county
“Only relatively recently did the people of Botetourt even find out they were doing it.
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they → find → it
“It’s just like when Purdue Pharma told doctors and conned congressmen with nice checks that their drug wasn’t addictive.
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drug → ’ → checks
It’s the same thing … they occluded the fact of the matter and how people were going to be hurt.”
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people → ’ → matter
The opioid crisis, she points out, remained hidden from view for years because of the shame that addicts and their families carry, but the data center issue now blowing up in the faces of politicians from both political parties has changed the narrative.
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issue → point → narrative
The amount of water that the Botetourt data center, codenamed “Project Raspberry”, would require only came to light after Henri Gendreau, founder of the Virginia-based news publication the Roanoke Rambler filed a public records request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA).
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Gendreau → codename → Act
Macy, 62, has published five books: Factory Man, about a furniture factory owner in rural Virginia: Truevine, about two Black brothers who were kidnapped and forced to perform in circus freak shows during the Jim Crow era; Dopesick, which later became a Hulu series; Raising Lazarus about the opioid crisis aftermath; and, last year, Paper Girl, a memoir about her Ohio childhood and the seeds of rising political division.
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which → publish → division
That has brought a natural – though to her unwelcome – comparisons to Donald Trump’s vice-president JD Vance, whose 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy traced his upbringing and his mother’s heroin addiction in Ohio and became a launch pad for his political career.
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memoir → bring → career
“Oh my God,” Macy exclaims, “I hate that comparison.
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I → exclaim → comparison
I’m my own person, I’m not JD Vance.
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I → ’m → ?
I’m 20 years older than he is.
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he → ’m → ?
It’s not the exact same part of Ohio.
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It → ’ → Ohio
He grew up with addiction and poverty.
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He → grow → addiction
Okay, I’ll take that.
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I → take → that
Tough grandma, I’ll take that.
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I → take → that
But he mocked poor people for being poor and said it was a lack of masculinity and a lack of thrift.
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it → mock → thrift
I would never blame poor people for their poverty.”
In Paper Girl, Macy describes how she received a Pell Grant to go to Bowling Green state university, Hollins university and a fellowship in journalism at Harvard, much as Vance received a grant under the GI Bill to attend Ohio State and later a scholarship to attend Yale.
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Vance → blame → Yale
“What I’ve tried to do is amplify the voices of people like me who don’t grow up with everything handed to them.
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who → try → them
He got out of that, went to Yale, became a venture capitalist, a senator and now the vice president, and now wants to yank up the ladder behind him,” Macy contends.
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Macy → get → him
Running as a Democrat in rural Virginia is of course very different from running under the same banner in a naturally blue or toss-up purple district.
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Running → run → district
One of the hurdles a Democrat candidate running in a red district must address is the shortcomings of Biden administration policies.
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candidate → run → policies
…and 17 more, not listed.
The Aporia
