Beth Macy is a journalist by trade. Through books like “Dopesick” and “Raising Lazarus,” the 62-year-old has spent the past few decades interviewing and writing about Virginians, many of whom have been touched by the ongoing opioid epidemic. But now a lot of people “don’t want to talk about the opioid epidemic anymore because the country’s on fire,” she told Daily Kos in a virtual sit-down.
To many, including Republicans who have stuck “Farmers for Macy” signs in their yards, there are a handful of new things to be worried about these days. Some voters are grappling with data centers being developed in their backyards, which might force them to sell their land. Others, like one generational farmer, have taken on additional construction work to make ends meet.
Struggles, Macy told Daily Kos, are in part to what she repeatedly called the “One Ugly Bill”—President Donald Trump’s signature tax law, which he signed last summer.
In her very red district, Beth Macy is hoping that voters will see her dedication to helping struggling Americans—like the type of people she’s written about for years—so that she can make change for them in Congress.
Take a look at our full conversation below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Daily Kos: So I’m here with Beth Macy, who’s running for Congress in Virginia right now. And Beth, I’m so excited to talk to you because it’s not often that I am interviewing a fellow journalist who has switched to running for office.
Beth Macy: Well, it’s not often that I would switch my great career to do this other thing. So I get it. It’s weird.
Daily Kos: I did hear in a separate interview that you were on the precipice of retirement before this.
Macy: I mean, I’m 62. I was thinking about it, but my husband will tell you I can never not work. But I was thinking in my head, “Maybe one or two more books, and then become a master gardener, but still write, because I love writing. But then when the One Ugly Bill passed, I said, “Somebody who can actually win has got to take this guy on.”
Daily Kos: How has that reaction been? Because you know, I think a lot about what you have previously been doing. You’ve been very involved in the community. I think of “Dope Sick,” I think of “Raising Lazarus.”
You can’t just write those books without being involved with the people who are experiencing that. And so would you say that your experience of campaigning feels similar to what you were doing?
Macy: Yeah, it does. And every place I go, I take my little reporter’s notebook because it has my speech notes. I also am interviewing people about how they’re feeling the painful effects of the One Ugly Bill and how they’re feeling about corruption, which is virtually unchecked. We have a president who’s a day trader, and a congressman who’s just a rubber stamp for the president.
So I talk to them, and what I’m really trying to do is—I know I’m never going to get the MAGAs—but there are a lot of people in the middle that are finally flipping a switch to the fact that we’re being robbed and we’re being told a bunch of lies and, really, it’s the billionaire class who’s funding all these reelection campaigns that are calling the shots. Just on Monday, I got an email from somebody who was out door-knocking, and they were able to get a neighbor to put up a sign that says “Farmers for Macy.” And this was a couple—he had never voted for a Democrat, she was an active Republican Party activist—and I said, “What flipped you?” I called them right away, and so I have permission to tell the story.
She’s a retired Marine, he’s a beef farmer. This farm has been in his family for 300 years, going back to the Revolutionary War, and he’s had to take another job because it’s so tough to be a farmer right now. So he has a full-time construction job, and the diesel prices are well over $6 now for the first time in history, and that is really hurting farmers. And you know, they got to fill up their tractors and all this stuff.
And so I said, “What got you, Morgan? What was it that made you want to have my sign in your yard?” She said, “Well, I watched Congressman Ben Cline’s ad last week, and he’s just gaslighting us. He’s claiming that he is lowering gas prices, and like we have eyeballs.” And she said, “I don’t care if it’s Democrat or Republican. This guy has got to go.”
She talked to her neighbors who were out campaigning for me and door-knocking, and they explained that I grew up poor. I wasn’t handed anything. I was handed a Pell Grant, which saved my life basically, and which I’ve more than paid back—which is what used to be the social contract in America, that we would help people, help our neighbors, and that I’ve been telling stories of people like them my whole career. … She finally said, “Well, maybe we ought to rethink this.”
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Daily Kos: So, when you’re talking to these people who maybe voted for Trump, who are willing to have discussions with you, are they hesitant about the idea of voting in a congresswoman who might be for raising their taxes to bring back things like this? Are you met with any kind of apprehension?
Macy: Not among people who really bother to do the research. I had this guy show up on my porch right after Christmas. He’s a fourth-generation business owner, grew up wealthy, and is wealthy now, and he said, “Beth, I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I am just fed up.”
He sold his family-owned business and now has his own business, develops property, and has a cement mixing business. And everything’s gone up for him, the cost of everything. The tariffs are hurting the development business because the wood, the aluminum and steel coming in from Canada—all that’s doubling. The diesel is really hurting both of his businesses, and when I said to him way back in December, I said—because he showed up on my front porch with a really nice check—and I said, “What got you?” And it was Donald Trump’s response to Rob Reiner’s murder, which was just despicable. He said, “I can’t stand the lack of decency.”
As the price of diesel goes up every day, he just becomes more and more awakened to how much this administration is hurting not just people like my relatives, but it’s hurting business people. And you know they [Republicans] can say they’re all for commonsense, conservative values, but what’s commonsense or conservative about a ballroom and a triumphal arch and putting your picture on the $250 bill? I mean, that sounds like communism to me. And they’re calling me the crazy one?
Daily Kos: Does it feel like people are receiving you well because you’re giving such a more personal, like, human approach to this?
Macy: That’s a great question. I think that’s why my journalism has always been well received, because I don’t start with the CEO. If I’m writing about globalization and the impact on all these workers that lost their jobs, like I did in my first book, I’m not going to go to the CEO of Basset Furniture until I’ve interviewed 100 people who have been impacted by NAFTA and China and politicians and greedy CEOs. … I’ve always approached my journalism [the same way], which is to tell the stories of the marginalized people, the outsiders, the underdogs.
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Ben Cline calls me flashy. He calls me a radical Hollywood attack dog. That was one of his posts. Because I was lucky enough to write a book set in Appalachia, partly his district, about the people who were left behind by unchecked greed, who funded his campaigns and sent doctors out into small towns to sell the lie that OxyContin wasn’t addictive, and now we have over a million people overdosed and dead.
I’m going to a funeral tomorrow about a young man I wrote about. He just died this week. I really thought he was going to be better, but people know that that’s what I do, and so he [Cline] calls me crazy.
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Daily Kos: Like I said before, it’s not often that I get to speak with a journalist, so you already know this process. It usually starts with the community, and then the journalist acknowledging what’s happening to these marginalized communities, and then it’s Hollywood and/or lawmakers that lift up this voice, and then hopefully, it becomes law.
So let’s say, in theory, you win and you’re elected, you head to Congress. What would be something that you’ve seen in this community that you’ve worked with so closely that would be your first priority?
Macy: I’ve promised Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal that I would immediately sign on to Medicare for All, because we know that would save millions of lives and a trillion dollars.
Honestly, if we can’t do that right away, then we got to get Medicare at 55 or Medicare at 50.
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But I’ve spent the last 15 years writing about the opioid crisis, so I would love to be on a committee. I would love to propose a bill that helps people who are getting out of prisons and jails get access to treatment while they’re incarcerated and then get a warm handoff to care when they get out, because that’s when people are most vulnerable to overdose death, not just going back to use, but to death because they’ve been opioid naive while they’re in. We know that. I wrote in “Raising Lazarus,” I wrote about some great programs that were doing that—were not just doing it to scale because too often it’s these cowboy sheriffs that keep it from happening, because they’re elected and that they’re afraid if they do evidence-based care in the jail and really work with the inmates to truly rehabilitate them, that they will appear soft on crime—they call it “hug a thug”—and won’t be reelected.
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Daily Kos: Aside from what you specifically would want to do, what do you think Democrats as a party should come together and work on? Should they win back the House, the Senate?
Macy: Repealing the most damaging part of the One Ugly Bill, repealing the healthcare stuff and going toward a single-payer model—that would be huge. Repealing the USDA cuts. If you ask me, the No. 1 thing that I’ve seen that’s shocked me as I’m running up and down the district with my reporter’s notebook is hunger is at a level I have never seen before, and I’ve been writing about SNAP and food insecurity for decades, but I have never seen it to the point where people are sleeping in their cars outside of food pantries because they want to be the first in line the next morning when it opens.
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Daily Kos: Do you have someone who you think of as a political superhero, who you aspire to be like should you be elected?
Macy: What a great question. I really like a lot of what [Vermont Sen.] Bernie [Sanders] says. I know people are like, “Socialist, socialist, socialist,” but he’s just like he’s been out there talking to the people his whole life. … He’s not gonna lie. He’s gonna tell you what he thinks based on his own research, and he’s gonna be out there speaking to the people.
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I also really like Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, I really like [Rep.] Pramila Jayapal. [Reps.] Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are working together on the Epstein files. I think that’s incredible.
Thomas Massie got primaried, and he’s using his remaining political power to go out strong for the people. And I don’t agree with three-quarters of what he stands for, but you got to respect the hell out of somebody who’s not just sitting back being a lame duck; he’s actually doing the work.
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Daily Kos: If you could sit down with Donald Trump right now, what would you say?
Macy: Nobody’s asked me that. What a question. I mean, he’s not going to listen. He doesn’t read. You know, they have to make little videos to tell him what’s going on, and he won’t listen even to his own staff people. Like, he didn’t even know our missiles were low because of the war in Iran, because everybody was afraid to tell him because he would blow up. I think it would be sitting down with a crazy narcissist. They call me crazy. That’s who’s crazy. And Ben Cline is super-glued to him.
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Daily Kos: Beth, thank you so much again for speaking with me. I really appreciate it.
Macy: You bet. I enjoyed it as well.
