Jamie Ager Announces for Congress in CD11

 

Photo Cory Vaillancourt

Reading this morning in the Smoky Mountain News about Jamie Ager, who announced he's running in the 11th Congressional District Democratic primary next March, setting up what may be a big battle for the nomination with Moe Davis, who ran for the seat in 2020 and is running again, about whom I've spilled a good deal of digital ink and to whom I've contributed campaign donations in the past. Moe Davis comes on hot where Jamie Ager is cooler. Ager told Cory Vaillancourt that he's more of a "happy warrior." So this will be a primary about political style as well as personal roots. Jamie Ager comes from Democratic Party nobility in Buncombe County; Moe Davis earned his spurs as a no-nonsense and morally upright member of the Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps, prosecuting terrorists at Guantanamo (while bravely opposing higher-ups over water-boarding). Davis is a relative newcomer to the 11th District (though he's a native of Shelby). His abrasiveness in 2020 ruffled a few feathers among establishment Democrats.

Jamie Ager is the grandson of Jamie Clarke (James McClure Clarke), famous for trading the 11th CD seat back and forth with Republican Bill Hendon in the 1980s. Both Ager's father John and brother Eric either served in the past (John) or is now serving (Eric) in the NC House. In other words, Jamie Ager comes from a family steeped in politics who seem to know how to do it.

Grandfather Clarke started the Hickory Nut Gap Farm, which specialized in dairy and apples. Jamie his grandson and now candidate for office runs the operation and has drawn praise for his "regenerative agriculture." He's 47. He earned a degree in environmental studies and sustainable agriculture from Warren Wilson College. The farm now encompasses some 250 acres of both family and leased land. Ager raises beef cattle, chickens, turkeys, and pigs — "all pasture-raised and hormone-free, using rotational grazing to promote soil health and carbon sequestration." The operation requires another 25 hired employees.

Ager is politically progressive but also practical-minded, as we say in the country. “My family’s legacy is kind of built around being environmentalists, which I 100% am," Jamie told Vaillancourt, "but I remember as a kid seeing some of this regulatory stuff come through, and when it hits the ground, it’s often kind of slightly ridiculous,” he said. Regulations are important for changing behavior, but they have to make sense to be effective (not to mention being accepted by the public as worth the hassle).

He believes entrepreneurship is the key to creating a resilient agricultural system and wants to see federal policy shift from incentivizing the cheapest food possible to rewarding sustainable, soil-friendly practices. He’s also concerned about the loss of farmland in North Carolina — the state was recently ranked second in the nation for farmland loss, behind Texas — and supports conservation easements and smarter development to preserve agricultural land for future generations.

Ager has sharp assessments of the incumbent congressman, fast-food-king Chuck Edwards, especially disaffection for Edwards' performance following Hurricane Helene. Two months after Helene, then-Gov. Roy Cooper and a delegation traveled to the White House with a $25 billion request toward an estimated $60 billion in damage. Rep. Edwards, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said he authored the relief bill that ultimately passed, but out of more than $100 billion in the bill, North Carolina has gotten scant and may get no more than $9 billion. “That’s frustrating, yeah, the fact that Chuck Edwards said we’re going to get all this money, and [he] actually sits in roles that can help facilitate getting that money, and then not actually being clear about what’s going on -- that’s a leadership problem,” Ager said.

While in Congress, Edwards has gone along with Republican budgeting and program-gutting, which has allowed maintenance to suffer in national parks like the Great Smoky Mountains. “It’s sort of this classic Republican move to defund things and then point out that they’re not operating well and to me, that’s just baloney,” Ager said. Congressman Edwards' cure is to start charging visitors to park. And when DOGE shut down the Social Security office in Edwards' district in Franklin, the congressman did nothing to protest the closure. 

When asked what's the matter with the Democratic Party, especially in a mainly rural district with a R+5 rating, Ager said, “There’s a level of condescension that comes out of urban areas for rural people,” he said. “That pisses me off.”

NOTE

There are at least two other declared Democratic candidates in CD11's congressional primary, but neither appears to have much of a base for competing credibly with Moe Davis or Jamie Ager.