John, I finally did it.
The campaign trail took me down east this past weekend, and so on Saturday morning, I woke up at sunrise and made a pilgrimage from Elizabeth City down to the easternmost point of North Carolina, just south of Rodanthe. After making it out to our state’s westernmost point when I was in the mountains a few weekends ago, I can finally, officially say that this campaign has taken me literally from one end of NC to the other.
I stood on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and just thought about how far we’ve come, and how even though there’s plenty of difference between Appalachia and the Atlantic, how we’re all tied together. We all live under the same sky, in the same North Carolina. Our fortunes depend on one another, and our prosperity is held in common.
After I’d had my moment in the sun at our easternmost point, though, I had to keep going and get down to Cape Hatteras lighthouse—ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been fascinated by lighthouses, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to swing by our most famous and proudest one.
The Cape Hatteras light has a long story—legend has it that its origins go all the way back to founding father Alexander Hamilton. Reportedly, when Hamilton was on his way to the American mainland for the first time (on the bow of a ship headed for a new land), the ship he was traveling on hit a storm in the night and nearly ran aground on the treacherous Diamond Shoals off the coast of North Carolina. And Hamilton wasn’t the only traveler who encountered danger off our coast: especially at the time, Diamond Shoals was also known by the much more ominous nickname of the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”.
As a result, when Hamilton became our new nation’s very first Secretary of the Treasury, he embarked on a series of infrastructure projects designed to make our coasts safer to traverse—and the building of a lighthouse on Cape Hatteras was among the very first. It’s a story that’s always stuck with me, and not just because it once again proves that North Carolina is the best and most important state in the country.
You see, John, it’s a very simple, uncomplicated story about how government can be a force for good when it invests in us. The people in charge identified something that would make people’s lives better and safer. Congress appropriated the money needed to make it happen, the Secretary of the Treasury studied and funded the project, and as a result, the Graveyard of the Atlantic became safer to traverse.
People lived who otherwise wouldn’t have, because Alexander Hamilton thought it was important for our government to invest in an infrastructure project. And sure, not everything our government does literally saves lives—but we all still benefit.
In a way, a lighthouse is also a perfect example of government investment, because really, John, our government is a lighthouse. Or ought to be, anyway. I’ve mentioned before that there are storm clouds on the horizon for our state. When the waters ahead look rough, we naturally look to our leaders—to our government—to guide us to safety. To be a shining beacon that helps us through the night and keeps us from running aground.
Lighthouses can’t steer the ship for us—and neither can the government—but when they do their jobs, they open up the potential for us to succeed. They give us the fighting chance we need to get ourselves to where we’re going. And they ensure that if we do fail, it doesn’t result in our utter destruction.
Over the last decade of Republican governance, though, our state hasn’t fulfilled that duty. We’ve left people behind. We’ve let whole communities scuttle on the shoals—get off the interstate, pick a direction, and go. It doesn’t take long to hit all kinds of places where people are losing hope, where they struggle to see a future, where the mills and the plants are closing and the young people are moving away and it’s harder every year to keep food on the table.
We’ve got to stop neglecting these places. We have to invest in them. We have to shine a light into the darkness and guide them to safety. Because when they fail, the rest of us won’t be far behind.
I believe that change can start here, with this election. We can flip the Treasurer’s office and show the whole country what can happen when a state uses its resources to make a difference in people’s lives. But I can’t get there on my own—I really need your support in order to make it happen. So will you make a contribution to my campaign today, John? Any amount you can give helps us get our message out to voters so that we can finally make our government the beacon in the darkness that I know it can be.
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Because it doesn’t just stop at this election. If we can win and really change course, then North Carolina can be a lighthouse for the whole country.
Thanks for being with me,
Wesley Harris
P.S. Apparently Alexander Hamilton’s ship also caught fire and he had to help the crew put it out while they were sailing through the aforementioned storm, so, basically, if you ever run into Lin-Manuel Miranda, let him know I have a pretty action-packed idea for a Hamilton prequel.
Wesley Harris is a North Carolina native and the only PhD economist in the General Assembly. First elected in 2018, he has been fighting hard for the residents of southern Mecklenburg County and working to make our state the best place in the country to live, work, and start a family. Now, Wesley is running for Treasurer to make an investment in our state's greatest asset, it's people. Together, Wesley believes that we can unlock our potential and build opportunity for every North Carolinian.
www.harrisfornc.com
Paid for by Wesley Harris for NC
Wesley Harris for NC
P.O. Box 77764
Charlotte, NC 28271
United States
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