The image above is the ninth district as seen by the 2011 edition of the National Land Cover Database (you can zoom in to explore this data at http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=e4c45b7769af40d280c1a74208662c9d — note: it takes a moment to load all layers)
Our district is larger than New Jersey.
In the image above:
- The red is our roads and cities.
- The green is our forest and wilderness.
- The yellow is our farms and pastures.
- The blue is our lakes and rivers and streams.
- The gray is rock and barren land.
This election, one candidate, Anthony Flaccavento has traveled to every corner of the district holding 100 town halls and listening to and learning from its people.
This election, one candidate, Anthony Flaccavento, has traveled to every corner of the district holding 100 town halls and listening to and learning from its people. The other (incumbent Morgan Griffith) has spent 8 years as avoiding his constituents and voting along ideologically conservative lines, often against the interests of the people of the district.
When you go to the polls Tuesday, ask yourself:
Who will fight to fund our infrastructure and keep our red roads safe and maintained, reduce the load on the interstates by expanding rail, and bring high speed broadband(and the jobs and opportunity that brings with it) from the red areas to the green and yellow ones?
Who has spent years in one of those yellow specks getting up before the sun, tilling the land and harvesting it’s fruits, and understands farmers and other working people of the district?
Who has literally written the book on how to build local economies in the tiny specks of red within seas of green and yellow and will work to bring those innovative bottom up economic ideas across our district and Appalachia?
Who will work to make sure that our children can get an education in one of our wonderful colleges, community colleges, universities and trade schools without being saddled with debt their entire adult lives and can come back home and find jobs, instead of moving to the redder areas up north to find employment?
Who will work to make sure people across the rainbow of our district can get quality healthcare without being one medical emergency away from bankruptcy? Who will fight to put more money in the pockets of Ninth District residents, not big corporations and special interests?
Who has fought with and for the people in the coal fields for decades and will stand up to the big coal companies who are putting profit over people as they shift to mechanization and automation to extract coal from mountain tops, providing much fewer blue collar jobs and ruining the natural beauty of our hills and hollers
Who has fought with and for the people in the coal fields for decades and will fight to provide support for the miners fighting black lung? Who will stand up to the big coal companies who are putting profit over people as they shift to mechanization and automation to extract coal from mountain tops, providing much fewer blue collar jobs and ruining the natural beauty of our hills and hollers (see the image above for a better idea of the impact)? Who will stand up to the energy companies as they put profits over the cleanliness of our water and the beauty of our pristine wilderness to ship natural gas through our district to the coasts and overseas?
Anthony Flaccavento has shown this entire campaign that he is truly an independent voice who will listen to and represent his constituents all across this district. I hope that when you go to the polls Tuesday you will consider who has made the effort to get to know the people of our district and will fight for us in Washington.
NOTE: this page is cross posted at https://medium.com/@timdgoff/who-can-represent-the-diverse-landscape-of-the-ninth-district-7ca29c7b487f
Comments: no replies