John,
This past weekend we were in Portsmouth. It’s at the southern edge of Ohio, bordering the Ohio River. It’s beautiful. Scenic hills and woods; historic architecture built when the city was a booming steel industrial base.
But as you roll into downtown, you notice something else. Empty storefronts and addiction recovery centers. The financial crisis and the opioid crisis devastated the people of Portsmouth.
At our community conversation hosted at the 14th Street Community Center, the questions and comments we heard from residents confirmed what we saw driving around: they see the damage corporate politics has done to their families, and they desperately want a new vision.
People told me how they have seen the railroad jobs go away, and the factory jobs disappear, and now they are wondering if working in a prison and remediating a nuclear plant is as good as it’s going to get for their children and grandchildren. This used to be home to an NFL team, was the shoe manufacturing capital of the world and its population was double the size it is today.
We need an answer for the #comebackcity.
I talked about my vision, making deep investments immediately to create jobs of the future that will train young people and pay them living wages and put them on a path toward a career. It’s not only the right thing to do given the increased flooding in this region, but it’s also a long-term economic development strategy for Portsmouth.
We need to ensure universal access to health care to make sure no one goes without preventative mental health medical treatment due to cost. This will also allow more people to pursue entrepreneurial ideas and start small businesses.
And we have to stop multinational corporations from chasing profits at the expense of communities like Portsmouth, offshoring jobs and preventing small and medium-sized businesses from competing.
But more than anything, people wanted assurance from me that I wouldn’t be another politician who gets elected and forgets about them. We have to restore people’s trust in the system, and promising not to make politics a career is one way to do that.
As we were leaving town, I stopped by a recovery center we had passed earlier. A few people outside shared their stories with me — the felonies for drug possession, their struggle to stay clean, and a plea for understanding given that where they were growing up the options were either drugs or ending up dead.
One guy in the group told me he voted for the first time last election for Donald Trump because he was better than the career politicians we always had.
I told him that my whole career has been a fight against a rigged system, but unlike Trump I actually care to do something about it. He said I could count on his vote.
Look, Obama lost Scioto County (where Portsmouth is located) by 6 points in 2008. Biden lost Scioto county by 40 points in 2020. We can’t start winning these communities back with corporate politicians. We can’t start winning them back with empty promises. I left Portsmouth dedicated to bringing our campaign back here, and to towns like Portsmouth all across the state, to engage folks in a new vision for Ohio. In the end, that’s why I’m in this fight.
More soon,
Morgan
Morgan Harper for U.S. Senate
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