He grew up in a dysfunctional family in Appalachia.
He rose above a chaotic upbringing, joined the military, got elected to office, became the first of his family to attend college and wrote a book that tells his story.
If this brief biography sounds familiar, you’re right, but it’s not who you’re thinking.
JD Vance, now an Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, has a life story that matches this account, although the chronological order of his life story is somewhat different — he wrote his book before he got elected, for instance.
The politician whose book I’ve been reading lately is a Democrat: David Reid, a state legislator from Loudoun County. His book, “Virginia Grit,” came out earlier this year, published by Clyde Hill Publishing of Lexington, although I’ve just gotten around to reading it.
The parallels between Vance’s famous life story and Reid’s less-famous one are fascinating; so are their differences. Both grew up under roughly similar situations but came to very different, and opposite, political conclusions.
I’m not here to judge their politics — you can do that quite well on your own — but some of you may recall that I wrote about Reid in a column a few years ago, calling him an “unofficial legislator” for the western part of the state. Since you likely know Vance’s story, here’s Reid’s.
He grew up under difficult circumstances in Rockbridge County, just outside Buena Vista. A photo of the road sign for Reids Hill Road appears on the book’s cover. (For those of you wondering, Rockbridge is officially classified as part of Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission, although those boundaries are often more political than cultural. For what it’s worth, Vance’s hometown isn’t considered part of Appalachia by the ARC, but Appalachia is often more of a state of mind than a political boundary).
The saddest, but most colorful, parts of Reid’s story take place in Rockbridge — how his mother abandoned her five children when Reid was 6 years old. Eventually his father, unable to care for so many children, turned over their care to others. Reid spent much of his childhood being passed around (at one point he moved four times in four years), eventually winding up at the United Methodist Children’s Home in Richmond, although his grades in Richmond public schools were so poor — “the best grade I was getting was a D- in PE,” Reid writes — that he was sent off to Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal for a more structured, military-style environment. In time, the deputy administrator of the children’s home and his wife took in Reid as their foster son — “effectively an adoption but without the name change.”
Reid tells all that in much more painful detail: why his mother left, how his father could never seem to make anything work in his favor, how at one point the family home had only an outhouse, how one day he was summoned to the principal’s office and handed a box of clothes that teachers and parents had collected for “the poor children.” Reid makes it quite clear that while growing up, little was expected of him. “In the entire time I lived in Rockbridge County, I never visited VMI or W&L,” he writes. “No one in my family, stretching all the way back to colonial times, had ever gone to college, so it was not something that we ever discussed. The historical and cultural inertia of my family history and family financial situation was that I ‘might’ graduate from high school, and I ‘might’ work in a local factory — if one still existed in the area. I would probably drink a lot of beer and whiskey, go hunting for sport and food, and only have Social Security checks to rely upon in my old age. This was the life my dad was living, the life my grandfather had lived, and it was pretty much the life of everyone around me.”
Vance might find those parts of Reid’s book quite familiar. Here’s where they start to differ. Vance’s childhood led him to conservatism, Reid’s led him to liberalism. “Throughout my life, Virginia and its people proved their friendship to me,” Reid writes. “They reached down to help me up time and again; and I feel the responsibility to pay that forward, ensuring that the civil, economic and community institutions that helped me carve my individual path in life are strengthened for today’s Virginians and those who will follow.”
From there, he goes on to write about why he backed expanding Medicaid (something most Republicans opposed), improving Interstate 81 (he faults Republicans for opposing some of the tax increases to raise funds for the road), and providing state funding for school construction (something that some Republicans have opposed on the grounds that’s a local function). Vance’s life story led him to draw certain conclusions about culture; Reid’s led him to draw conclusions about how government can be a positive force in civic life.
Readers should keep in mind that Reid’s book came out just as he launched a bid for the Democratic nomination for the 10th Congressional District seat, so much of this reads like a campaign manifesto. He came up short in that 12-way race but will be back in Richmond and so remains relevant to us — more so than if he had been on his way to Congress.
Republican readers can skip over those political points if they like and instead just focus on Reid’s life story, if they wish to better understand one of our state’s lawmakers. Reid also sits on the House Appropriations Committee, which is involved in crafting the state’s budget, so he means more to us than the typical legislator from Northern Virginia.
Readers of all political persuasions might find Reid’s account of his first campaign for the House of Delegates in 2016 to be interesting because his experiences transcend political boundaries. Some readers might even be horrified. I’m referring to the amount of time that Reid had to spend fundraising. The House Democratic Caucus mandated that he do 30 to 35 hours of “call time” each week — calling potential donors. Yes, that’s almost a full-time job — on top of the full-time job that Reid already had working for a defense contractor in the intelligence sector. Weekends weren’t for shaking hands with voters; they were for call time — noon to 8 p.m. on both Saturdays and Sundays.
“The Caucus, and by extension, the large institutional donors, were collecting metrics on our fundraising progress,” Reid writes. “They wanted to know for sure that we were a serious candidate before they would be willing to invest in my race.” He estimates he made 10,000 phone calls. He also knocked on 8,000 doors. Both numbers are high, but notice that he spent more time dialing for dollars than he did going door to door.
Those who have worked in campaigns, particularly as candidates, know this is just how it is, regardless of party. Fundraising takes an enormous amount of time. I have yet to meet a politician who enjoys this. Among former office-holders — whether they retired on their own or were retired by voters — the one universal sentiment is that they’re glad to be done with fundraising. Some have had great sport with me because now I understand that far better than I once did. As a nonprofit, we at Cardinal are in the fundraising business, too. (Here’s where I rattle our cup.) Anyone who is thinking of running for office, particularly the General Assembly, ought to read the chapters in Reid’s book that deal with running a campaign. It may look glamorous to some from the outside. It doesn’t sound quite so glamorous as Reid describes spending New Year’s Day interviewing potential campaign managers — and later realizing that they were interviewing him as well to figure out if he would be someone willing to put the work into a campaign.
He also describes disagreements he had with the House Democratic Caucus on which issues he should focus on — he felt the caucus was pushing issues that would motivate the party base but not swing voters. He also writes about the complexities of legislating, describing how party leaders wanted him to withdraw one particular bill he had sponsored dealing with paid sick leave. They didn’t think it went far enough and advised waiting a year. “After the election, we’ll have a larger majority in the House and a Democratic governor, so we can bring back something better next year,” Reid was told. That was 2021 and you know what happened next. Democrats lost the House majority and the governorship that fall. “With this one decision, we delayed paid sick leave until at least 2026,” Reid writes. “We had let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Republicans may object to that policy, but they have ones of their own that fit this lesson: Often in politics, it’s better to take what you can get, rather than wait for something better that may never happen.
“We must avoid being fooled by people peddling easy solutions wrapped in a single glib phrase,” Reid writes. “At some point we must transition from campaigning to governing and governing is very, very hard. All the great ideas discussed during a campaign must be translated into actionable legislation that can pass both the House and Senate and potentially withstand state and federal legal challenges.”
Partisans on both sides may not like that advice, but I suspect that most of the legislators they send to Richmond would agree with Reid on that point.
In this week’s West of the Capital:
I write a weekly political newsletter that goes out Fridays at 3 p.m. In this week’s edition, I write about:
- Rep. Bob Good, who recently lost the 5th District Republican nomination to John McGuire, has filed to run again in 2026.
- Gloria Witt, the Democratic candidate in the 5th District this year, picks up an unusual endorsement.
- Democrats hope vice presidential pick Tim Walz will play well in rural areas. I take a look at whether he has in Minnesota.
- How Virginia’s new roadkill law, sponsored by Del. Tony Wilt, R-Rockingham County, applies to some recent news.
- Why this week’s anniversary of the Voting Rights Act calls attention to a 9th District congressman from the 1950s and ’60s.
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