She Might Be Democrats' Version of JD Vance

Beth Macy is a journalist and author in Virginia who is best known for the 2018 nonfiction book Dopesick, which told of the ravages of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia. The 61-year-old from Roanoke is now running for Congress in Virginia's 6th District, and, as a Politico profile notes, the move is drawing inevitable comparisons to Vice President JD Vance, who wrote his own best-seller about Appalachia in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. "That, though, is about where the Vance-Macy Venn diagram ends," writes Michael Kruse. "Vance's lament for Appalachia ultimately set him on a trajectory to the political right, a rise propelled by titans of the tech industry." Macy, on the other hand, is a social progressive who advocates "a New Deal-style liberalism."

Macy grew up poor in Ohio and made it out with help from federal aid. "What changed so much since I grew up and left home 40 years ago? During that time, I watched as the measures that lifted me out of poverty, that ladder … got yanked back up," Macy told the crowd at a recent forum. "I'm done writing about it," added Macy (another of her books is Factory Man, about the impact of globalization on her state's furniture industry). "It's time to do something about it." She has previously accused Vance of blaming Appalachians themselves for the region's troubles instead of the coal and pharmaceutical industries, or "The bought-off politicians who failed to regulate them."

Vance, she also wrote previously, "turned his back on the things that helped make him who he is—public schools, public college and Ivy League opportunities." A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment. Macy is the third Democrat to enter the race, notes WTVF, and even if she wins the June primary, she would face a tough race against incumbent Republican Ben Cline. Democrats haven't won the 6th District in more than three decades.