I like this Andrew Payton guy running for the 34th District House seat, which encompasses the City of Harrisonburg and the western half of Rockingham County.
Doing some quick research on Payton, he only decided to run for the seat – in a competitive district (Trump +7.4 points in the 2024 cycle) – two weeks before the spring filing deadline.
“I didn’t do it as a part of a long-term plan, and I certainly didn’t do it for the $18,000 annual salary,” said Payton, who on his website reports, as his job, “Learning Designer,” “which means he designs curriculum and learning content for various academic clients.”
Payton, the son of a mom and dad from working-class backgrounds who met while working for the federal government, has an MFA in creative writing, was a Fulbright Scholar in Slovakia, has lived and traveled in Latin America.
Payton wrote in an open forum submission to the Daily News-Record last month that he’s not running because he thinks the Republican incumbent, Tony Wilt, “is a bad person who must be removed from office by any means necessary.”
“The knee-jerk reaction these days is to assume your opponent can do no good. We must resist this temptation while there is still time,” Payton wrote.
Payton is running “so that you have a choice on the ballot this fall.”
“I am running because I believe that’s what good for workers is good for the economy, that the top 1 percent of earners aren’t paying their fair share in taxes, and that our state government should be funding schools and protecting land and water, not collaborating with ICE to kidnap our neighbors and preventing folks who love each other from their right to marry,” Payton wrote in the DNR open forum submission.
He did specifically call out several Wilt votes – the Republican’t vote against the right to contraception (HB1716), against marriage equality (HJ9), against expanding Medicaid (HB30), against expanding renewable energy (HB2413), against holding utilities accountable to fair pricing (HB2084), against minimum wage increases (HB1928), and ranked-choice voting (SB1009).
Payton also called out Wilt’s vote to protect a rapist’s right to custody of a child produced from that rape (HB1727).
That last one, in particular, seems like a no-brainer.
“It’s time for new leadership that’s ready to conquer these uncertain times. Tony has had long enough — and what does the 34th have to show for it?” Payton asked in a post on his Facebook page last week.
“It’s time to do something different, which means it’s time to stop re-electing the same, tired politicians who got us into this mess. Vote for change on Nov. 4 — vote for me and I’ll pave a new way forward in the Valley,” Payton wrote.
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Chris Graham
