U.S.
E. Tammy Kim
LOUISA, Va. — Gloria Pope, 66, works in real estate and volunteers with the Democratic Party in a rural county northwest of Richmond. For 12 years, she watched Republican Rep. Eric Cantor "work for the rich and powerful." Even after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit the area in 2011, damaging homes, churches, schools and government buildings, he did not step in to help the community, she recalled.
Dissatisfied with his leadership, Pope mobilized local Democrats to vote for his tea party challenger, David Brat, in June’s open Republican primary. Brat defeated the House majority leader by vowing to fight for local interests, in perhaps the biggest upset of the primary season.
But many voters in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District worry that the candidates for Cantor’s seat will continue to ignore the needs of low-income residents. As court-imposed redistricting and growing poverty begin to reshape the district, their concerns — “affordable health care, education, economic equality and jobs providing living wages,” according to Pope — seem increasingly urgent.
Aggressive gerrymandering has long kept Richmond and its surrounding counties divided into rich and poor jurisdictions: Cantor represented upper-middle-class whites on the west side, and Democrat Bobby Scott represented District 3, the poor, largely black south and east. An Oct. 7 decision by the Fourth Court of Appeals will change that: It ruled that the state’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally drawn on the basis of race, intended to pack the area’s African-American, largely Democratic voters into District 3 and keep them out of District 7. The current map will remain in place for Nov. 4, but the 3rd District — and its neighboring districts, including the 7th — will be redrawn early next year.
Regardless of what the new map looks like, the economic profile of District 7 is already changing. Seven percent of the population is defined as poor, well below the national average of 15 percent. Yet the number of people eligible for food stamps has gone up by half in Hanover County since the recession, and families are struggling to obtain long-term care for aging family members, said Sheila Crossen-Powell, the local director of social services. Henrico and Chesterfield counties, generally known as white, affluent commuter suburbs, are seeing more immigrants and grappling with new pockets of need, evidence of what’s been described as the suburbanization of poverty.
“The gap between wealthy and low-income people is greater than it’s ever been, and for people in the middle, they haven’t made any gains at all,” said Marco Grimaldo, president of the Virginia Interfaith Center. To help the state’s poor, the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis recommends that Virginia improve access to public transportation and accept federal funds to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Earlier this year, bills to broaden the health-care program and raise the state minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour, the federally mandated rate) died in the General Assembly.
Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, espouses free markets and faith in “God-given” individual rights. He tends to begin his sentences with “as an economist” and opposes “Obamacare,” amnesty for “illegals” and an increase in the minimum wage. He won the primary in part by selling himself as a local, Main Street conservative: Unlike Cantor, he would champion small, not big, businesses and would stay connected to the district. (Brat, who is leading in polls, declined to be interviewed for this story).
His Democratic challenger, Jake Trammell, is a sociologist and director of disability support services, also at Randolph-Macon. “We are in a fairly affluent district, and that’s not a mistake,” he said in an interview, referring to the gerrymandering declared impermissible. “Nonetheless, we do have pockets of poverty … and that’s one reason I am in favor of raising the minimum wage.” In Louisa County, where he lives on a family farm, he wants to extend broadband Internet access and public transportation.
Libertarian candidate James Carr, a health care analyst, has campaigned on opening the nation’s borders and dismantling federal programs like “Obamacare.” He said, “The government shouldn’t force anyone to do anything. We need to separate out insurance from health care. The alternative is getting government out of the way.”
During a recent candidates’ forum at Richmond’s Benedictine Prep, a private high school, poverty was mentioned just once, when, in response to a question about raising the minimum wage, Trammell said it could help “people out of poverty.” The audience — mostly white, white-haired and sporting Dave Brat buttons — did not react to that suggestion with boos, as it had earlier, when Trammell praised the Affordable Care Act.
A few days later Randolph-Macon College hosted a debate — between the Republican and the Democrat only. It refused to invite Carr, citing a campaign-financing minimum: He has spent around $6,000 to date.
Although a Democrat hasn’t represented the district since 1971, Pope thinks it’s possible Trammell could win — that is, if her fellow Democrats go out to the polls. Louisa County, home to Trammell and Carr, is a heavily Republican part of District 7. But she sees her neighbors, many of them unemployed and surviving on public benefits or Social Security, as “fed up” and looking for change.
A Christian herself, Pope criticized Brat for making frequent appeals to Jesus while showing little compassion for the poor. “Doesn’t every religion say you have to take care of the lesser people around you? Isn’t that a religious tenet?” she said. “So why are they not concerned about the lesser among you — those who have less and those who need more?”
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