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.
