Old North State Politics: “There is indeed a lot of North Carolina past Asheville- hours of it, in fact. There’s a mid-sized university, part of a national park, a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway, 8 counties, a separate nation, a ton of bears, some good flatpickers, terrific whitewater, three NC House districts, two NC Senate districts, and the better part of a congressional district.
People chimed in, as you would expect, with their experiences with far Western North Carolina geography—some commented about how many other state capitals are closer to them than Raleigh, some talked about the length of time from Murphy to Asheville, and one said it’s the same distance from Manteo to Robbinsville as from Robbinsville to Dallas (fact check: not true. But I get the point. It’s a long state).
Perhaps unintentionally, Gardan’s tweet revealed a lot about the importance of political geography for political representation. Distance from the state capital influences how people think about politics and how they are represented.
Even in today’s hyper-connected age, information about state politics is difficult to find in the far-Western counties. The region’s largest daily newspaper, the Asheville Citizen Times doesn’t have home delivery in most of the far Western counties. Some counties receive local television signals from Tennessee, Georgia, or South Carolina. Just as importantly, the informal networks where people receive cues about state politics (parties, water cooler conversations, and the like) are less connected to state politics as you get farther from the state capital. As a result, studies find that the farther one gets from the state capital, the less people know about state politics.
The choice of candidates for state legislative office also varies as you get farther from the state capital. The reason is simple: it’s easier (and cheaper) to maintain a life at home when your legislative work and home life are close to one another. The “cost” of service in the legislature (whether measured through actual or social costs) is higher if you live in Bryson City than Bethesda. Perhaps for this reason, legislative districts farther from the state capital are less likely to have competitive elections than those closer to the state capital.”