When I graduated with my PhD from Clemson, my main priority was starting my career and making a living, so I went where someone with my skills was needed. In my case, that meant spending a few years up north, cutting my teeth on international tax policy for a Big Four accounting firm. I learned a lot doing that, but no matter how long I was away, North Carolina never stopped tugging at my heartstrings.
I could have stayed up north and spent a lifetime rubbing elbows and climbing the corporate ladder, but nowhere else is here. I might have been having success up in Boston, but North Carolina made me who I am.
Every opportunity I’ve been able to pursue in my adult life was because of the opportunities I had growing up, because North Carolina took a look at a kid from a small town in the rural foothills and said I was worth investing in, because all our people were worth investing in.
And while I was away, I watched as our state turned away from that vision.
The Republican Party came to power and began slashing revenues and expenditures. They undermined the world-class education system that was responsible for so much of my success. They politicized necessary investment in infrastructure that lets our state grow. And they attacked our neighbors with legislation like the infamous Bathroom Bill that cost North Carolina’s economy billions of dollars to score cheap political points against a vulnerable minority.
I couldn’t stay away and watch as it happened. I didn’t yet know what I was going to do or how I was going to help, but I knew I had to come home and do something about what was happening in my home state. My employer at the time had an office in Charlotte, so I asked for a transfer, found myself an apartment, and never looked back.
When we have a government that invests in its people, it fosters a sense of common responsibility for the wellbeing of our communities. It inspires people to give back. And our state, nation, and world are better for it. I’m running for Treasurer because I want North Carolina to find its way again, to once more be the kind of state that makes those sorts of investments. One that stands by our values of neighborliness and community.
I want this state to be a place that our people always want to come home to.
And I hope you’ll join me in pursuing that mission. We’ve got less than ten weeks to go until election day, and just over seven until the start of early voting. We’re fully in ramp-up mode, and we need the resources to spread our message from Andrews to Ahoskie, West Jefferson to Wilmington, and every place in-between.
