Embargoed for Tuesday, Nov. 18th at 5:00AM
November 18, 2025
ROANOKE, VA — Today, Beth Macy will formally announce her campaign for Congress at the Historic Fire Station One in Downtown Roanoke. A former Roanoke Times reporter and author of “Dopesick,” among others, Beth Macy has always worked to hold the powerful accountable — from corporations that shipped jobs overseas to executives who fueled the opioid crisis. Now she’s running for Congress to make life affordable again for working families, expand access to health and mental health care, invest in rural communities, and ensure every child has a real chance at a better future by rebuilding the ladder that helped her escape poverty.
EVENT DETAILS:
Beth Macy Special Announcement
Where: Historic Fire Station One, 13 Church Ave SE, Roanoke, VA
When: Doors open at 4:30pm; Program begins at 5:30pm
Speakers include: Dr. Brenda Hale, Rev. Dr. Bill Lee, Andrew Tait and Beth Macy
“Working-class Virginians are hurting, and too many politicians in both parties in Washington have looked the other way,” Macy said. “Costs keep rising, healthcare is out of reach, and the powerful profit while working families struggle. I’m running to hold them accountable and build a government working people can rely on — with affordable healthcare, strong schools and a fair shot for every child.”
“Ben Cline has made very different choices in Washington,” Macy said of the Republican 6th District congressman. “He’s voted against addiction treatment, against lowering healthcare costs and against investments our rural communities desperately need. Time and again, he’s sided with pharmaceutical companies and party extremists while families in the 6th District struggle to get by.”
“I’m looking forward to hitting the road and hearing more about the issues that are impacting Virginians and showing the people of the 6th District what real representation can look like.”
As part of that effort, Beth Macy will host her first District 6 Listening Tour stop on Monday, November 24th, in Waynesboro. Details are available here.
Macy grew up poor in a small Ohio town, the first in her family to go to college and built her adult life in Roanoke, where she and her husband Tom raised two kids on a reporter’s and a teacher’s salary. For 25 years at The Roanoke Times, Beth covered the stories of people and communities across western Virginia, listening without judgment and digging for the truth, even when it was uncomfortable.
As a best-selling author, Beth earned national recognition for her deeply reported books about families, work, opportunity and the forces shaping life in rural America. Her first book, “Factory Man,” chronicled how globalization reshaped small towns. Her book “Dopesick” exposed how opioid executives preyed on vulnerable communities and fought to conceal the damage they caused. The book helped shift America’s understanding of addiction and was turned into an Emmy- and Peabody-winning Hulu series she helped produce and write. Her latest book, “Paper Girl,” continues her lifelong work of telling honest stories about home, struggle and what it means to build a better future.
Throughout her career, Beth Macy has stood with outsiders and underdogs, and she has seen firsthand how the system has devolved to benefit billionaires over working families. She has listened to parents who lost children to addiction, workers whose jobs disappeared and communities forced to fight for basic services like child care, health care and mental health treatment. She has watched families across the 6th District work harder than ever, while falling further behind because the people in power have become more beholden to corporations than to the communities that elected them.
Learn more about Beth’s campaign at www.bethmacyforcongress.com.
