news
Heath Shuler steps off the political sidelines
Smoky Mountain News
August 26-September 1, 2020
Former NC11 Congressman Heath Shuler is becoming more active in advocating for a strong outdoor economy and green energy. Cory Vaillancourt photo BY CORY VAILLANCOURT STAFF WRITER ven Hollywood screenwriters would be hard-pressed to craft a more quintessentially American story. The son of a postman, a small-town boy raised in a poor rural mountain community finds gridiron glory in high school, earns a scholarship to one of the country’s most vaunted college football programs and is drafted into the National Football League with the third overall pick. After a short pro career, he returns home to finish his degree, pursues real estate development, knocks off an eight-term incumbent congressman, serves three terms of his own and retires – all by the age of 42. Heath Shuler’s been relatively quiet on the political scene since leaving Congress in 2013, but in 2020, Shuler is writing another chapter in that story — opining on the possibility of returning to politics, keeping tabs on the race for his old seat, advocating for green energy in his native Western North Carolina and stepping off the sidelines to endorse Joe Biden’s presidential bid. “I think without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns that I have is the morality of the presidency right now,” said Swain County native Shuler. “I met the president before he became the president. We’ve got to be able to take back the integrity of that seat.”
E
A CREATURE ONCE ROAMED Shuler’s maintained a Twitter account since 2017, mostly reliving memorable moments in University of Tennessee football 6 history and commenting on the current state
“I think without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns that I have is the morality of the presidency right now. I met the president before he became the president. We’ve got to be able to take back the integrity of that seat.” — Heath Shuler
of college athletics. He’s rarely commented on anything political — Shuler noted the passing of his friend, Rep. John Lewis, this past July — but on March 2 of this year, Shuler’s tweet was frank and clear. “We don’t need a socialist or a narcissist. We need a President who can unite America and work with both parties. I’m all in for @JoeBiden.” For those keeping score at home, the socialist is Bernie Sanders, the narcissist is President Donald Trump and March 2 was one day after several of Biden’s Democratic Presidential Primary opponents, including South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigeig and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out to endorse him. In spite of Sanders soldiering on with a second quixotic quest for the nomination, Shuler’s endorsement wasn’t all that surprising, considering the turf he’s staked out near the conservative edge of the Democratic Party since the day he announced he would run for Congress, back in 2005. “Heath was a true representative, because as Biden said the other night, ‘I’m not just going to be a Democratic president, I’m going to be a president for the American people,’” said Myrna Campbell, who was one of Shuler’s
first campaign volunteers back in 2005. Campbell, now the chair of the Haywood County Democratic Party, ended up as Shuler’s director of constituent services. As such, she was familiar with the people calling Shuler’s office. “We always had a number of calls from Republicans who truly supported Heath and were pleased with some of the things he did,” she said. “There were Democrats who got disgruntled with him because he didn’t always vote the way they wanted him to vote, but he truly represented the district, and I think his votes reflected the electorate.” The most volatile issue at the time may have been the Affordable Care Act, which Shuler voted against. “We got 10 times the amount of phone calls from Republicans against it than from anyone in support of it,” Campbell said. “I always admired [Shuler] because of the heat he got for that.” Beating Republican incumbent Charles Taylor was an upset of the highest order; in office since 1991, Taylor had risen to become chairman of the Interior and Environment subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. Outspent by a margin of more than 2-to-1,
Shuler campaigned as a socially conservative Washington outsider. Taylor, he said, had lost sight of the 11th Congressional District’s interests. Chief among those interests was CAFTA, the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement that Shuler said in a later press release had hurt working families by shipping more manufacturing jobs south of the border. Taylor missed the vote on CAFTA, which ended up passing 217 to 215. Taylor, and his many businesses, had also become entangled in a number of shady financial transactions but it may have been his support for a half-billion-dollar road project through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, called “the Road to Nowhere” and opposed vehemently by conservationists, that proved among the most damning. On Nov. 7, 2006, Shuler, with his 2-yearold daughter in one arm, entered the ballroom of the Asheville Renaissance Hotel to the opening strains of his college fight song, “Rocky Top,” and acknowledged his 54-46 percent victory over Taylor. “It’s an exciting time for the people of Western North Carolina,” Shuler said in a Nov. 8, 2006 story by Smoky Mountain News reporter Michael Beadle. “Our country deserves better. We’re going to get there.” Shuler was part of a 31-seat pickup in the House for Dems, giving them control of the chamber for the first time since the Newt Gingrich-led “Republican Revolution” in 1994. That election also resulted in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s elevation to Speaker of the House — the first woman, and the first from west of the Rockies. Generally opposed to abortion, gun control and same-sex marriage — the old “God, guns, gays” triumvirate that divided Democrats of the day — Shuler quickly became a rising voice in the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of relatively conservative Democratic representatives in right-leaning districts. In 2008, he handily defeated Buncombe County Republican Carl Mumpower with 62 percent of the vote, joining a Democratic wave that resulted in the election of Barack Obama. Two years later, Shuler again prevailed 5446 over Republican nominee Jeff Miller, but Shuler’s party took a shellacking nationally, losing the House by giving up a whopping 63 seats. “A creature once roamed the American South that many now presume to be endangered if not extinct — the conservative Democrat. For nearly a century following the Civil War, almost all white Southerners were conservative Democrats,” wrote Western Carolina University professors Chris Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts in SMN earlier that year. “As late as 1978, more than a third of all Democrats in the South were conservatives. In most parts of the South today, however, finding a conservative Democrat is about as likely as spotting a bald eagle — they do exist but they are hard to find.” A prescient prognostication perhaps, so Shuler didn’t exactly celebrate his victory; despite losing half of the
