Tuesday June 11, 2023
Tuesday June 11, 2023
CANDIDATE PROFILE: “You Cannot Lose by Running”
Editor’s Note: We are taking a brief break, but will return on Thursday. Today we feature the most-read non-Spotsylvania School Board story published so far this year.
CANDIDATE PROFILE: “You Cannot Lose by Running”
Another independent is trying to change the rules of politics and elections. It’s an uphill battle, but Elizabeth Melson is fine with that.
Drive just west of Fredericksburg along Route 3, and between the entrance to Chancellorsville Battlefield and the junction with State Highway 29 one passes through some of the most fecund lands east of the Appalachians.
Along the way you’ll pass Salubria, a Georgian mansion associated with Daniel Boone and his wife Rebecca, near where they settled in the late 1750s after fleeing the Cherokee war in North Carolina. Boone worked at Salubria hauling tobacco from the estate to Fredericksburg.
You’ll also pass lots and lots of farms, meaning Boone would probably feel not-too-out-of-place even today in this land near the center of the new 28th Senate District, Indeed. this stretch is representative of this largely rural district as a whole, which has Warrenton to its north, Orange to its south, and Culpeper almost squarely in the middle. The district includes the large ex-urban community Lake of the Woods to its east, and stretches west beyond Madison to the mountains.
It’s also home to Elizabeth Melson. During the day she runs Farm-to-Table solutions, a marketing company that helps farmers, artisans, and chefs promote their products. She’s also heavily involved in helping to promote farmers’ markets in Warrenton and Haymarket.
A 2018 article about her in the Fauquier Times called her an “agricultural dynamo.”
She’s looking to add another title - Giant Slayer.
An independent candidate for state senate in District 28, Melson knows she’s facing a tall order.
Long-time state senator Bryce Reeves holds the Republican nomination in the 28th, and a war chest approaching $650,000 according to VPAP. Melson, by contrast, will do well if by November she cracks $50,000 in funds.
So why do it if the odds of winning are near zero?
“People deserve a choice,” Melson tells F2S.
Like a growing number of Americans, Melson has become frustrated with the political parties, which are “more focused on gaining power of the three branches in Richmond” than in solving constituents’ problems, she said.
This description unwittingly fits almost word-for-word with a recent book about political independents called the Independent Voter, which is co-authored by Omar Ali of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
I previously wrote about this book in December for the Free Lance-Star. Ali told me at that time:
“Independents make up 40% to 50% of the population …. They are not people in the middle, and they’re not closet Democrats or Republicans…. Instead, they’re people tied together by a shared concern that there’s something wrong with the partisan control of the political process.”
Melson has seen this problem play out in a number of areas that directly affect her and those people her business helps support. For example, in 2018 two pieces of legislation (HB 825 and SB 962) were introduced that could potentially have ended the work-around that many farmers used to consume unpasteurized milk. (For the full backstory, see this piece at newsleader.com.)
Melson saw this as a move to limit consumer choice, and help monied interests that powerbrokers are beholden to. She was heartened, however, when an uprising of farmers was inspirational in ultimately having the bills killed.
Her sense that lawmakers have sacrificed finding solutions for holding on to power is what’s driving her run.
And she believes that finding solutions is key to getting us out of the hyper-partisanship we find ourselves in.
Asked about the book-banning movement that has ensnared Spotsylvania County, and is rearing its head in Orange and in Madison, Melson agrees that she is “concerned about content.” But she’s also concerned about banning books, “especially books based on history.” So she stops short of taking books off shelves, instead favoring solutions that limit access to titles if parents so choose, and allowing other parents who don’t object to allow their children to read the books.
She takes a similar path with school choice. Her own child has been home schooled, attended private school, and public school. She favors school choice, but not at the expense of the public school system.
So instead of taking state and local funds and giving them to parents as vouchers, she prefers using tax breaks to help parents educate their children where they choose.
Building a coalition
Melson doesn’t blink at the assertion that she faces a near impossible task in beating Reeves. He has name recognition, money, and a track record of legislative success.
But Melson feels she’s tapping into something deeper. Something more than simply giving people a choice at the polls. (When she entered the race, there was no Democratic candidate - that has since changed.)
She’s working to change a system that for her, and many more, simply doesn’t work to find solutions that matter to the people in her district.
So she runs. And if she loses?
“You cannot lose by running,” she says.
She has a point. And a growing sector of the populace is with her.
Enough to win the 28th? Probably not. This time.
But in politics, as in life, change is the only constant.