Beverly Harrison: The Secret Sauce to Winning in Rural America

• Background:  I’m opposing a powerful Republican — Majority Leader Todd Gilbert who prevented Virginia from voting on the ERA (stopping the ratification process for the entire nation) and who shut down our special session on guns after just 90 minutes and until after Election Day.
• Why this race matters:  see above.
• Who benefits if I win: my district, Virginia, and the nation.

The special sauce has two obvious ingredients:

1.  Run a candidate in every race
2.  Donate

and here is the hard won knowledge of the mystery ingredient… 

3.  Say the candidate’s name.

Everywhere.  Anywhere.  But especially in the press and social media.

It’s difficult to win when the media will not acknowledge that you are running in the first place.  As I stated in this week’s diary, I don’t want to be Virginia’s best kept secret.

And it’s not just me, it’s more than a dozen other rural candidates whose races simply aren’t being covered. Why?  That’s easy. They aren’t easy wins.  I get that and I get why it’s vital we support winnable races.  The rural races are investment races where it may take several cycles to flip the seat.  But we are the party of long-term solutions. We are known for investing in people.  We need to invest in our people, our candidates.

And there is another group we need to invest in. Rural America.

We may not share their voting record or their career choice, but we all need health care, education, and a living wage job. Rural Americans are suffering up there in economic nosebleed seats. We can’t fund our schools properly if our tax base is minimal and maxed out. It’s tough to compete in a global — or even national — economy if you don’t have reliable broadband internet. We need to care about things outside of our Starbucks and Instagram culture, things like the tournament system in chicken farming which keeps farmers on economic tenterhooks.

I am one of many races, many candidates you should have heard about. We are the future of rural Virginia.  My hope is that we can be the future of rural America as well.

My story starts here.  My name is Beverly Harrison and I am running for the District 15 seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
BEVERLY HARRISON —  DELEGATE FOR VA 15     TWITTER   FACEBOOK   DONATE