The route along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Virginia into Tennessee and North Carolina winds through green pastures, steep gaps, and sleepy towns.
A four-lane blacktop highway runs from southwest Virginia into Tennessee, where Interstate 40 leads to the Dixie Highway, which leads into the North Carolina mountains.
Poverty is part of the culture in the southern Appalachians, but the people are a resourceful breed that believes in God and hard work. Appalachia has deep gospel roots from a time when it wasn’t uncommon for the faithful to speak in tongues.
They love the United States and worry about what might become of it.
Folks in the Appalachian region told The Epoch Times that affording groceries to feed their families is their top concern. Some worried about all of the illegal immigrants coming into the country and the government’s funding foreign wars instead of taking care of problems at home.
Others mentioned the need for affordable health care and abortion access.
Several said they distrust Washington, where politicians promise one thing, then do another once elected.
Many told The Epoch Times that they were independents who will vote for former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), a self-described hillbilly who grew up in Appalachia.
Several Democrats in the region, which is considered solid red, declined to be interviewed. Others said they like Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, because of their strong stance on abortion and health care and their promise to bring down the costs of housing.
One man said he didn’t think Trump was a good person, so Harris won his vote.
To outsiders, it might seem counterintuitive for poor, rural folks to support Trump, who is a billionaire.
Conservatives who spoke to The Epoch Times said that if anyone can help the U.S. economy, it’s Trump because of his business experience and because he is so rich that he can’t be bought.
They said they didn’t know much about Vance, but they liked his roots in rural Kentucky and Ohio, which they can identify with. They see the hillbilly who wants to be vice president as someone who understands their lives.
Virginia Coal Miner
Driving along U.S. Route 23 on the Virginia Coal Heritage Trail, white church steeples pierce the blue sky in the Appalachians.The message on the Speers Ferry Church marquee hints at what’s on many people’s mind in this neck of the woods: “Prices Go Up But Salvation is Still Free.”
At the end of summer, lazy clouds cast shadows on the vast green mountains, and back roads named Goode Hollow and Kin Folks Drive lead into the hills.
Chad Baker is 74 and lives in a small mobile home near the train tracks in Norton, Virginia, where folks still make moonshine whiskey.
He worked 37 years—half his life—in strip mines in Virginia and Kentucky pulling coal out of the ground.
He has black lung from years of breathing coal dust and lives on a fixed income from retirement.
For the first time in his life, Baker said, he intends to vote this November—for Trump and Vance.
“I don’t get no education,” he said. “I don’t know if I passed the sixth grade.”
“But I’m smart enough to know what they’ve done to this country,” he said of the current administration.
Baker said some of his buddies feel the same way, so they made a pact not to cut their beards until Trump gets in office.
His chief complaint is the price of groceries. He no longer buys hamburger meat at the store because it costs too much. He said he survives on sandwiches and meals at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
“It’s got plumb out of hand,” Baker said of prices.
He grew up hunting squirrels and deer. He and his friends would forage for wild ginseng in mountain hollers. Back then, going to school didn’t seem so important, he said.
Good-paying jobs in the mines were there for the taking, allowing mountain men to earn a living with muscle and sweat.
Baker said he feels that Trump can reverse the United States’ economic decline by restoring fossil fuel jobs and providing cheaper energy.
“Now there’s no jobs. They’re all gone,” he said. “And you got to have a good education to even probably apply for some of those jobs, you know?”
Baker said he doesn’t understand why President Joe Biden and Harris, who is running to replace her boss, want to stop producing fossil fuels.
He said he figured that makes the United States poorer, while making other countries richer.
Illegal immigrants entering the country are another problem for Baker because he said he thinks some of them don’t have the country’s best interests at heart.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” he said. “So many of them come from countries that hate America, but yet America has loved them.”
The current administration owns the border crisis, Baker said.
Campfire Politics
Even in late August, the mountain air is cool at night.Shellie Fields and her husband, Paul, a veteran who rides a Harley-Davidson, sat around a campfire and shared their thoughts about the presidential race.
Fields, a 48-year-old Republican, considers herself a hillbilly, just like Vance.
“I love JD Vance. He’s down to earth. He’s just like us,” she said.
The people who criticize Trump’s running mate are jealous because he pulled himself out of poverty and found a way to go to an Ivy League school, she said.
“He had to work for it,” Fields said.
She said Vance came from the middle class and understands the problems of rural towns.
Vance’s upbringing couldn’t have been more different from Trump’s, but folks living in southern Appalachia said the selection of Vance reflects a commitment to the working class.
Fields said she doesn’t have much faith that Harris understands the middle class. But she said she thinks Harris’s selection of Walz as her running mate will help her because he was a football coach, which people feel is down to earth.
She said “Bidenomics” has been a disaster, but she worries that women and black Americans will vote for Harris even if they don’t know what she stands for.
Fields said she believes in putting the most capable person into the White House, regardless of race or sex.
She said she will vote for Trump because he is strong on the border and will stand up to China, two of her key concerns with Harris.
“I do not like how she’s not visiting the border,” Fields said of Harris. “The border’s got to get fixed.”
Not everyone in Norton feels the same.
Amanda Amaro, 47, is a transplant from North Carolina who raised her children in Virginia and describes herself as a “headbanging hillbilly.”
Norton is definitely Trump country, she said while taking a smoke break from her restaurant job.
But she doesn’t plan to vote for him. She won’t vote for Harris, either.
She said she believes Generation X and Baby Boomers are clinging to Trump because it makes them feel safer and he says things they want to hear.
Amaro said she thinks everything is staged in U.S. politics, right down to the Trump assassination attempt.
“I know that’s very cynical,” she said. “I used to have hope; trust me, I did when I was younger.”
She distrusts the political system and Washington.
Though it’s about a six-hour drive from Norton, the nation’s capital could be a million miles away.
Amaro has struggled financially, finding it hard to land a job despite that everybody says there are plenty available. Like many others in town, she values family and hard work.
She grew up believing in the American dream, but the older she got, the more it seemed to slip away.
Rural Tennessee
In Tennessee, the sons and daughters of pioneers such as Daniel Boone, who explored and settled the untamed Tennessee wilderness, lived by their wits and brawn.That same rugged individualism lives on in East Tennessee today.
Rural Tennessee is blessed with ample rivers, lakes, and mountains, where folks like to hunt and fish and believe in the Second Amendment, according to Terry Marek, chairman of the Sullivan County Democratic Party.
“Individuals in this part of the country are very independent, so people really believe in self-determination and their ability to make their decisions,” he told The Epoch Times.
For the first time in Kingsport, Tennessee, the Democrats will hold a rally on Sept. 7 to support their presidential nominee.
“It’s very exciting. It could be anywhere from 25 to 200 people,” he said.
Marek, who grew up in New Orleans, is a transplant to the region. He is under no illusions that Tennessee will turn blue this year.
But he said he believes that the excitement surrounding Harris could drive enough down-ballot votes to stop a Republican supermajority in the Tennessee House.
“I find many individuals that contact us are afraid to put yard signs up,” Marek said.
He said he hopes this election cycle will change that, paving the way for liberals in the region to “realize it’s OK to come out of the closet and vote Democrat.”
Marek said people in east Tennessee and southwest Virginia are worried about health care, including access to abortion.
Abortion has become a major issue for Democrats, driving many to vote in the midterm elections in 2022 and preventing a Republican red wave.
Tennessee’s abortion ban, passed in 2022, is considered one of the strictest in the nation, allowing abortion only to save the mother’s life or prevent major injury.
The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature allowed one company to control the region’s health care, resulting in closures to emergency rooms and clinics, Marek said.
Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol make up the Tri-Cities area. They each have one hospital, but some facilities have closed, he said.
A women’s health care clinic in east Tennessee that also performed abortions shut down and moved to Virginia because of the state’s abortion ban, Marek said.
The economy is also a big issue for east Tennessee voters, he said, but there are plenty of jobs paying $10 to $18 per hour in the Kingsport area.
Poverty is no stranger to the region.
“Everybody feels the pinch of prices being higher,” Marek said. “But unemployment is really, really down in our neck of the woods, so we’re at or below 3 percent unemployment.”
Tennessee saw an influx of new residents because property values were relatively low.
Prices have gone up now on rentals and home purchases as more people moved into the area, he said.
People hope Harris can cap the high price of rental housing through rent control, as they have in New York City, he said.
Economy and Inflation
Farther west, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, the economy is front and center.John Williams, 56, reckons he’s a hillbilly.
“I was born in the woods and raised in a cave,” he joked while stopping at a local market in Kodak, Tennessee.
Williams considers himself an independent voter, likely to break for Trump.
He doesn’t know much about Vance but liked the idea of a hillbilly helping to run Washington.
“I think they need to get a good old redneck in the office to run the place. I think it would help a lot,” he said.
Williams said he liked Trump’s tough approach in standing up to China and North Korea.
He values Trump’s business experience, too, believing that it could help with inflation, his No. 1 issue.
Williams said he’s in favor of getting rid of the Department of Education and giving the money directly to the states, an idea Trump campaigns on.
Right now, schools in the area need more resources to help students get a better education, Williams said, especially children with disabilities.
His wife has struggled to get her autistic child help in school, he said.
“Any time you get rid of the middleman, it’s better,” he said.
Like others, Williams said he believes that elites run the country and look down their noses at mountain folk.
In reality, the men and women of past generations were resourceful and broke their backs to build what the younger generation takes for granted, he said.
Williams, who dropped out of high school, said he has worked in construction and as a handyman. He also learned to work on cars.
When one job dried up, he'd learn a new skill to get by, he said.
Home Grown
Donny Pancotto, 46, of Kodak, Tennessee, values his family, hard work, and God—pretty much the average middle-class values in the Appalachians.Pancotto, who works in maintenance at a local apartment complex, said he feels ignored by politicians. He favors the Trump–Vance ticket.
Issues for him include the price of food, neglect of veterans, and the border crisis, which he believes unfairly benefits illegal immigrants at the expense of U.S. citizens.
For the first time ever, Pancotto planted a garden this year to help cut down on his grocery bill. He noted that English cucumbers are expensive, at two for $4.
“We’re not making more money, but we’re paying more out,” he said.
Pancotto said he hopes that Vance might actually make a difference for people like him because Vance understands the region’s struggles and could better represent their interests.
North Carolina
U.S. Highway 25, also known as the Dixie Highway, parallels the French Broad River most of the way from Tennessee to Hot Springs, North Carolina.The road runs past lush, green farmland, weathered barns, abandoned gas stations, and wooden shacks flying U.S. and Confederate flags.
Hot Springs, with a population of 520 souls, is an old resort town that’s having a resurgence. For almost 200 years, people have come to bathe in the natural mineral springs.
Transplants from all over the country have moved here, mixing with local Southern culture. The combination gives the town a Bohemian feel.
Hot Springs has a brewery, restaurants, quirky shops, and historic homes turned into lodgings. Hikers with backpacks stop at the town on their journey to access the nearby Appalachian Trail.
Phillip Solomon, 53, moved from Los Angeles to this mountain town in 2016 after the presidential election, when he said he saw “things go a little sideways.”
In 2019, he opened Artisun, a coffee shop and eclectic store filled with crystals, jewelry, artwork, pottery, and more.
As he talked, a diverse clientele wandered into the store, where someone played the violin and an old piano, rehearsing for an event. Motorcycle riders came in wanting coffee.
Solomon wanted a simpler life in the mountains. He holds diverse political views and values kindness, self-determination, and freedom of speech.
“I think one of the greatest things about America is being in a country where you’re free to express yourself and live your life as you choose, have autonomy over your body, and make the choices for your body that you think are right for you,” he said.
His wife and daughters support Harris because of her pro-abortion stance. His mother-in-law, who is from Florida, is a solid Trump supporter.
Solomon is in the middle, weighing his choices.
He isn’t necessarily pro-Harris or pro-Trump. He is trying to understand both sides.
On the one hand, he plays in a punk rock band out of Atlanta, soon to release a song that could be offensive to those who like Harris, George Soros, and Anthony Fauci.
On the other hand, he helped provide entertainment at the White House under former President Barack Obama.
He doesn’t like the political polarization he’s seeing in the country, noting that Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention about the need to understand those with different opinions.
“Even though there is someone who doesn’t agree with you about abortion, or guns, or taxation, or the border, or international relationships, we need to allow people to at least be able to express themselves,” Solomon said.
“Unfortunately, the hope and change that we thought was coming [under Obama] really didn’t come,” he said.
Solomon said free speech is critical to bringing people back together.
He said he did not like how some people gloated when Trump was shot in an assassination attempt during a Pennsylvania rally.
The economic concerns in Hot Springs mirror those of other southern Appalachian towns, such as the price of groceries and high housing costs. Illegal immigration, especially the arrival of military-aged men, worries some, too.
“I think a lot of people around here are concerned about inflation,” Solomon said.
Down the street, a rooster named Wayco serves as the greeter at a store called Tobacco Road. He has the run of the place, which is packed full of beer, wine, other drinks, and snacks.
Michael Walker, 42, is a transplant from Tampa, Florida, who moved to the area two years ago, following his high school sweetheart who wanted to trade the beaches for the mountains.
When asked who he favored for president, Walker said, while holding Wayco: “I'd like for it to be Harris. I vote my emotions rather than any party affiliation.”
