Mike Pruitt is 33 years old – an Albemarle County supervisor and civil rights lawyer who works for a non-profit fighting housing discrimination. He decided to run for a seat in Congress because he thinks this country is at a turning point.
“We, as of today, have the highest levels of inequality that we’ve seen in this country in over a century. There is not a person alive today who has seen greater inequality than we have at this moment.”
Pruitt is the son of a public school teacher and a mechanic.
“I grew up in a small rural corner of the Blue Ridge in South Carolina – former textile country, but by the time I was born, textiles had moved on, and it was the ruins of a former mill town.”
He went to college on an ROTC scholarship.
“Which that right there was already kind of a challenge, because this was ’09. I’m a queer man. It wasn’t legal for me to be serving in the military.”
After college he spent 8 years in the Navy, serving two tours in combat zones and was stationed all over the country. Wherever he went, Pruitt noticed signs of housing discrimination.
“I realized this was a thing I had a calling for – toward housing justice, housing affordability, making a difference in this way, and I just was like, ‘You know what? I should be a lawyer!’”
After graduating from law school at UVA, he settled in Albemarle County and got involved in politics.
“I quickly found myself running for the board of supervisors, and also I met an amazing man and got married last year.”
And now he’s ready to step up – to serve in Congress – because he claims to understand how people in the fifth district are feeling.
“People aren’t helpless. They don’t need someone to come along and save them. What they are is mad. People are mad in this district, and they might not always agree on the exact cause, but they know at the end of the day they’ve got a boot on the back of their neck. They know that their wages haven’t gone up in ten years, but somehow the taxes have. They know that the Rite Aid down the street is closing, and the next place they can get a prescription might be half an hour away.”
He’s also angered by the current representative.
“You’ve got a man who looks you in your face and says, ‘I’m not going to do anything to threaten Medicaid. I’m not going to do anything to threaten the welfare of foster kids or the elderly, and then he votes on a bill that is going to significantly roll back spending on those programs.”
Pruitt joins Paul Riley, a retired army veteran from Crozet, in seeking the Democratic nomination.
