Oct. 26, 2026 Editor, The News-Gazette: Beth Macy’s powerfully instructive books about such pressing issues as addiction and the loss and outsourcing of American jobs, along with her decades of reporting on these subjects and many more for the Roanoke Times, have helped me realize why she will make such an effective representative for Virginia’s 6th Congressional District.
Yet it’s not just her deep understanding of these issues, together with her own working-class roots, that equip her to speak so well for us.
In a time when empathy seems in short supply and is even belittled as toxic, Macy has it in droves. Unlike some of our politicians, she doesn’t dismiss her prospective constituents’ struggles as of their own making, whether farmers who can’t afford what they need to produce our food, lower-income citizens who can’t obtain the preventive health care that would reduce medical costs for us all, students forced to pay off massive loans using income with which they might have bought a home, and so many others being harmed by forces beyond their control.
Her experience has taught her how to listen effectively in order to elevate the voices of ordinary American citizens, and in doing so to formulate common-sense solutions that will benefit us all.
RUSSELL HART Lexington
