Earning a seat at the adult table. Jason hasn't earned it.

“Plenty of men can do good work for a spurt and with immediate promotion in mind, but for promotion, you want a man in whom good work has become a habit.” -Henry L. Doherty. We live in one of the most unique areas in the entire state, both in cultural references and scenic views. We are some of the hardest working people that came to be in what some would call “God’s country”. However, despite our majestic nature views and resilience to hardships that come along in life- Our current representative Jason Smith doesn’t reflect this. Especially when it comes to employment opportunities in this area. In fact, our unemployment rate is at 2.9% for our county and is the same or higher in some counties throughout the district. While the state level is 2.5%. Now, these numbers may seem low, but the reality is we’re ranking at the bottom of job opportunities. We are the biggest industry in the district is healthcare with 51,051 jobs. While our manufacturing jobs are at 32, 291 in population size of 736,467. That’s not a whole lot of access to good-paying jobs, especially in our area which has only a handful of manufacturing plants around. The bleak reality is he should be advocating for more jobs, but he’s not. A shining example of that is his No vote on the CHIPS which brings back jobs to areas like ours with the manufacturing of semiconductors used for most of our electronic devices. Can you imagine how a plant like that would increase the robustness of our local economy? Especially after we still haven’t fully recovered from when Invensys and Regal Beloit shut their doors. Both of these closed down under Jason Smith’s watch. So, instead of trying to get new business in this area. He chose to let us fend for ourselves and sits on Twitter and whines about inflation or “reckless spending”. So, does it really sound like he represents our interests or reflects our hardworking habits? The answer is no he doesn’t. He just used us for a promotion and that’s it. So maybe it’s time we give Randi McCallian that promotion instead? Advocating for our interests is exactly what a senator is supposed to do and proves that she’s willing to put in the work for that promotion. J. Stewart Willow Springs