- Jamie Ager, the Democrat running in District 11, the US Congressional seat out in Western North Carolina.

He joins us now for a brief discussion about his campaign and himself.

Mr.

Ager, thanks for joining me.

- Thanks for having me.

Honored to be on here.

- Tell us about yourself.

The family name is known in politics in Western North Carolina.

You've never sought office.

Tell us about yourself and why would you wanna go to Congress now?

- Well, thanks to you for the opportunity to be on here.

I'm fourth generation here at our farm in Fairview, North Carolina.

You know, the farm's been a lot of different things over the last hundred years.

And for the past 25 years, you know, my wife and I have been operating it.

And we started, you know, I always joke, we were young and idealistic about coming back to the family farm 25 years ago and making it work and figuring out how to make a living.

And we raise grass-fed beef and pasture-raised meats and we sell those to different markets that have created a brand.

And I work with a bunch of other farmers now with a real mission, a purpose-driven business around building community through agriculture.

And a lot of corporate folks, you know, the shareholder capitalism is kind of our ideals.

And, you know, making sure that we do well, good by the land, do well by farmers that we work with, make sure they're making enough money, make sure that the employees of the business are well taken care of.

And so we built a company.

We're entrepreneurs and farmers.

And then, you know, my dad was in the North Carolina House.

My granddad was in the US House back in the '80s.

And I always say -- and my brother's in the North Carolina House, and I say, "You kind of end up doing the things the people you admire do."

So here I am.

And I do love this country.

I think we live in the best country in the history of the world.

And, you know, the privilege to have representatives from different parts of the country is such an honor.

And to me, you know, it takes good leaders to make our country work well.

And I care about our community.

I care about this region here in Western North Carolina.

I really like people and I want people to do well.

And when I see that our political system is so broken and full of partisanship and a lot of rhetoric, to me, I think what people are craving, and I've been traveling all over Western North Carolina now for the past over a year, and people are craving just people, good people who care about the community, who are earnest and want to solve problems for people on an everyday level.

And that's the kind of leader I want to be for this community.

- The 11th is an interesting district.

I mean, it's been redrawn, of course, over time, but historically, Democrats and Republicans can both win the seat.

And right now, you have Republicans who will fight with each other, and you have your MAGA, your conservatives, you have your libertarians.

But now over on the Democratic side of the ticket, there's some infighting there too, philosophically.

You have the DSA or the far left, you have your moderates, your Don Davis-type Democrats, you have your traditional liberals.

What are you, in terms of a Democratic candidate, what can voters expect, especially those that may decide they're gonna switch party and vote Democratic this cycle?

- It's interesting.

People always want to put you in a box, don't they?

And if they're gonna put me in a box, I tell them to put me in the I love Western North Carolina box.

And that's where I feel the most comfortable.

As far as where I come from, my background is in agriculture.

I know a lot of farmers.

Farmers are pretty independent, self-reliant, know how to work hard.

I also admire business.

Running and operating a business takes a level of leadership that's not easy.

And to me, I'm a Democrat because we want to make the world a better place.

And believing that we need to make our systems and our economy and everything else work for working people is very, very important to me.

But there's a big difference between being able to have a big idea about whatever, fixing healthcare or fixing immigration, these big things that need to happen.

And there's a big difference between that, being idealistic, and then execution.

And to me, business has really taught me a lot of tools about how to execute, how to lead better, how to be humble, how to make mistakes and apologize, just basic human relationship stuff that's really important to do in a leadership role.

And I love people.

I like, you know, I want to have good relationships.

And I think that if there's ever a time in this country, we need people in Washington, D.C.

who are ready to roll up their sleeves and build relationships with folks and fight for what's good for the community here in Western North Carolina.

And that's, I think that's the box I live in.

I don't know what you'd call that.

- I didn't have this question written down, but I do want to ask you, you've used the word farmer and entrepreneur interchangeably as this is who I am.

And this is what I'll bring to my candidacy or to my service in the U.S.

House.

What is the, yes, they're the same thing, but what's the difference in being a farmer who runs a farm and an entrepreneur who can also be a farmer, but so many other things as well?

And if it goes to D.C., what kind of leader does that bring?

- Sure, I think from an agricultural standpoint, farmers know how to work hard, work with your hands.

There's an element to agriculture and farms where a lot of family activity, we have a family business too.

And I do consider a lot of farmers are small business people, right?

You have to figure out how to operate a farming operation and get the economics right.

And so that's something I really think a lot of people don't remember.

They get romantic about a farm, but the business side is only, the farm's only gonna survive if the business model is strong.

And so, as I think about that context, just somebody that knows how to get things done, somebody that's not scared to go do it themselves if they have to sometimes, but also running a business and being an entrepreneur means you have to be creative sometimes about what you're doing.

We've built a brand, which isn't typically what farms do.

We've had to be strategic about hiring a bunch of people and really understanding how to do sales and marketing and typical small business stuff.

But we've always brought a very entrepreneurial mindset to our farming operation, which has served the operation well.

- We have a list of policy proposals on your platform.

I guess we need to get to that.

Number one, I saw you put down, bring the money or more of it for Hurricane Helene recovery.

I do wanna ask you, Governor Stein has tried, Chuck Edwards has tried, Senator Ted Budd has done things.

Money is flowing into the West.

What would you do differently to either speed it up or make more of it come to Western North Carolina?

- I mean, the response to Helene, broadly speaking, has been pretty slow and a lot of frustration for so many people.

I don't think anybody disagrees with that assessment of the situation.

We are in the process right now of doing a big inventory of all the things that still need to be worked on and done.

And to have leaders in this country come into our community and say that they're gonna get everything done and get everything fixed and everybody back on their feet is just not what happened, right?

And so people are frustrated, people feel let down.

People feel like they don't trust the federal government to do the things they said they're gonna do.

And to me, that's disappointing, especially when you have friends and neighbors that were so devastated by that storm.

We've got communities that need money, that would have done the work, they just need to get reimbursed for the work.

I think in DC, the entrepreneurship thing that I mentioned, I'm not scared to go and sit on the department of the steps of the Homeland Security and just wait around to see who we gotta talk to to get the money shaking loose, to make a stink, to fight, right?

We needed a fighter at that time.

And I'm just not sure that we had leaders up in Washington that were willing to do that for us.

And so, I think there is general frustration, speaking to that frustration and hearing about all that frustration is part of my job.

And I just think that's part of what we need to do for sure for this community.

And we have seen some more trickle in, there's no question that there's been more and more money trickling in, which is great.

These communities need it, but we needed better leadership at the time this disaster happened and that's what I wanna be able to provide.

- Candidates of both parties are discussing healthcare, what should be done with it.

A lot of it revolves around government interventions as opposed to the free market.

I see that you support a public option as part of a broad accessibility and affordability program for healthcare.

How is that different from Medicare for all?

And where do you stand on the universal healthcare debate?

There's some Democrats are out there promoting that we need a seismic shift in healthcare.

- If there's ever an example of a broken system in Washington, DC and the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world, it's healthcare.

We've got so many people that I talk to all the time that it's not only either they're not insured, they're not going to the doctor 'cause they're sick, but they know that bill's gonna overwhelm them.

It's the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country.

People don't have good access to primary care.

We've got a shortage of doctors in primary care.

The fundamentals are just off.

And so clearly what's been happening isn't functioning well for everyday people in this country.

And to me, I am humble about solving this problem because obviously it's a massive part of the economy and reorganizing our economy is risky business when you look at the context of that.

But at the same time, we're determined that we've got to fix this system so it works for people.

And so I've met with community members all over, all the different hospital systems, a lot of nonprofits focused on this issue, trying to learn as much as I can from people all over the community to get feedback and learn.

And what I tell them is, look, I don't have the answers.

This is a very complicated problem and I'm not sure anybody's got all the answers.

And so to think you can come at this thing with the answers is, to be certain, means you're probably wrong about something.

That's what I always say.

And so to me, approaching it with humility, curiosity and a determinist that we got to get through this is kind of my approach.

And so there's a lot of different versions of all the different slogans and it's easy to say slogans.

It's hard to do the work.

It's kind of that same problem is saying the thing is way different than execution.

And so I want to execute on this.

We need to get this problem solved for people.

And I don't know how to do it, all the answers to it, but I tell you, I'm going to work hard and talk to all the people to make sure we get some progress on it over the next couple of years.

- Got about three and a half minutes.

I want to run through these.

The affordability agenda, everyone has one.

One side will say, hey, let's cut taxes, spur that economy.

The other says help the working class with targeted tax cuts or grants.

Both of those costs money.

This country is $40 trillion in debt and running a huge annual deficit.

How do we do it?

How do we make things more affordable in the face of an inflationary environment and a government that isn't an opinion that is stretched thin financially?

I don't know, is that a fact or an opinion anymore?

- Well, there's no question we've got 40 trillion in debt.

Like that's a known entity and both parties are responsible for that.

And to think that that's not got to be dealt with is certainly an issue.

I mean, I think housing's a good example where probably cutting some red tape and making it a little easier to build creative homes so that people can get lower cost homes.

Healthcare is certainly driving cost of things up for people, causing price of gasoline to go up with these foreign interventions is extremely unpopular from everybody I talked to here in Western North Carolina.

You know, when everybody's struggling to pay their bills and you're on a fixed income and your gasoline doubles, it really affects your ability to be able to, you know, go on vacation, save money for retirement, feel optimistic about the future.

And so to me, you know, we've got to, as leaders, tackle these problems one at a time and really just know that we've got to create a scenario where working folks feel like they can build a life in this country.

There's no, that we just have to be determined that that's true.

And we have to look at all the different levers.

I don't care what politics you have or what ideology you come at this from.

Let's be pragmatic and let's solve problems for people.

- Solve the Iranian conflict for me.

Can't do it alone, but you can have an idea if you become a new Congress member.

- Well, we're gonna have to learn a lot about that, but for sure we need to get out of there as quickly as possible.

- Very clean.

Finally, there's people all around America that are wanting to know about North Carolina's congressional races.

And you certainly were recruited at the national level as a good quality candidate in their eyes.

If people want to learn more about Jamie Ager or Jamie Ager for Congress, how do they find you online to read about your platform policies?

Maybe watch other interviews that you might've done out there.

- Well, you can find us on social media.

Google searches are always pretty effective.

Agerforcongress.com.

We're trying to make ourselves as available as possible and we're working really hard every single day to earn the trust of people here in Western North Carolina.

And that's the region we're gonna focus on this campaign.

- That's Jamie Ager, the Democrat running in the 11th US congressional district for US Congress here in Western North Carolina.

Mr.

Ager, be safe out there on the campaign trail and enjoy the fall weather I hope is coming very soon.

- Thanks so much for the time.

- Bye-bye.

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