Danville responds to Corey Stewart’s claims about the city

One of Danville’s top elected officials and the Danville Register & Bee took issue with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Corey Stewart’s description of the city during Saturday’s debate.

Stewart described Danville as being ground zero for Democrats’ failed economic policies. The city, according to Stewart, is full of boarded-up storefronts, riddled with residents addicted to opioids and families riven by “skyrocketing” suicide rates.

And, according to Stewart and opponent Tim Kaine, the incumbent Democrat, Danville is part of Southwest Virginia.

Danville, as the Register & Bee’s editorial points out, is actually in Southside Virginia, the area south of the James River and between Hampton Roads to the east and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west.

The city’s economy historically relied on textiles and tobacco, but both of those industries have rapidly declined or collapsed.

“What Stewart and the Breitbart writer don’t acknowledge, because it doesn’t fit their predetermined narrative, is that this city and its residents are far from dead,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote. “Rather, we are re-examining ourselves, tallying our strengths and weaknesses and determining where we fit in in the 21st-century economy.”

Disappointing that Corey Stewart is using @BreitbartNews talking points about #DanvilleVA in his #VaSen debate today. We’d be happy to show you, or anyone, the great work that is being done here by many ppl. We’re a great city. Not a talking point.

— Vice Mayor Lee Vogler (@LeeVogler) July 21, 2018

Danville’s Vice Mayor Lee Vogler — at 31 the youngest person in the city’s history to hold that position — tweeted that he was disappointed the city became a talking point during the debate. Stewart’s description of the city seemed largely based on a July 12 news story from Breitbart, the newspaper and Vogler wrote.

“We’d be happy to show you, or anyone, the great work that is being done here by many ppl,” Vogler tweeted to Stewart. “We’re a great city. Not a talking point.”

He extended the same invitation to the author of the Breitbart story, Chadwick Moore.