I’m not asking you to be a Democrat, I’m asking you to vote for the more constitutional and conservative candidate. Me.
I know many of you have never voted for anybody with my letter next to their name so let me say I am not writing to ask you to change what you believe. I am writing because almost every conservative I’ve met during this campaign has agreed with me: the people running the federal government right now are not conservatives. And the career politicians who keep getting sent back, floated on money they don’t want you to trace, are not representing you either. It is time we stopped pretending they are.
You believe government ought to stay small and stay out of the way. Out of your business, off your land, away from your family. You believe money Washington spends came out of somebody’s paycheck. And you believe your rights are yours already, not something you have to go ask for. So do I. Which is why I want to ask you something honestly: when was the last time your representation defended any of it?
The federal deficit passed $2 trillion with a month still left in the year. Interest on the debt alone went up $111 billion in twelve months. Yet, we’re telling US citizens they are going to get another round of free handouts after the election. Nobody who sits silently in Congress while this occurs can call himself a fiscal conservative.
Our government released 3.5 million pages on Jeffrey Epstein. Yet, one woman is in prison. There have been no new arrests, and the Justice Department has already said there will not be any. Powerful men (in countless industries and both political parties) were named and nothing happened to a single one of them. That is not law and order.
Cameras photograph your license plate on roads that do not have a stoplight for fifteen miles. Your location and your purchases are bought and sold by companies you have never heard of. Nobody voted on any of it, and nobody in Washington is trying to stop it. That is not limited government.
To add insult to injury, my opponent aligns himself with the very companies exploiting our communities; take the Moss 3 landfill fight for example. A company came along wanting to bury 2 million tons of other states’ trash there every year for four decades, stacked 600 feet above everything around it, on the hill above the Clinch River. New York’s garbage. Maryland’s garbage. Sitting over our water, on the site where miners showed the real mountain strength and values we hold when they stood up to Pittston to fight for working families. It died in June of 2024 because neighbors in camouflage shirts and loafers alike packed a board of supervisors meeting and would not go home. Where was my opponent? Taking thousands in campaign donations from the very same developers the people who elected him were fighting.
So it’s no surprise he was seen recently in a Congressional committee hearing begging to bring data centers to our district. The same data centers his constituents are fighting.
That is not conservative and it is not representation. It is fifteen years of a man keeping his seat while he sells out the mountain values he supposedly ran on when he was initially elected. Conservative means to conserve. To keep. So look around and tell me what has been kept. Not the hospital. Not the school. Not the farm. Not the storefronts. Not our young people, who leave because nothing here pays enough to stay.
To be fair, Morgan Griffith is conserving something. He conserves the tax break for Epstein class, the benefits to his donors, the hospital chain’s margin, the packer’s price. And when there is not enough to go around, it is your child’s opportunity that gets held back so somebody else’s child can have it.
We have the 409th poorest district in this country. He’s never passed a single bill to help our kids, our farmers, our small businesses or our seniors. Worse, he’s never attempted to… But the donors are happy.
I realize the word conservative doesn’t just reflect economics so let me tell you plainly where my beliefs come from, so nobody has to guess. I am not a red hat Christian nationalist. I am a red letter Christian. The words printed in red are the ones that guide my steps and my votes. Feed the hungry. Care for the sick. Whatever you did for the least of these. He was not vague about it and He did not attach a means test.
We are not going to agree on everything, and I will not pretend otherwise to win your vote. Ask me about anything and I will tell you where I stand, to your face, without dressing it up. I’m not asking you to switch parties but I am asking you to send an actual representative of SWVA to the House of Representatives. This isn’t partisan, it’s about our people. Hire me for two years. If I do not do what I said I would do, fire me. That is how it was built to work, and it only works if somebody is willing to do it.
Sincerely,
Joy Powers
Democratic nominee, Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District
