Troubled Va. Town Gets Attention but Wants Action
Politicians Line Up to Visit Martinsville, But Promises Ring Hollow to Residents

By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 30, 2009

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- No one in this tiny Southside mill town likes to be reminded of its tough luck, or its distinction of having the highest jobless rate in Virginia.

But there is a pushy group of job seekers who won't let anyone forget.

Politicians.

Ever since this city's textile and furniture plants collapsed a decade or so ago, political candidates of all persuasions have arrived for campaign stops that sometimes resemble bedside visits to a critically ill patient. The message is straightforward: In their hands, even the sickest will become well.

The attention has intensified with this year's race for governor. The three Democratic candidates in the June 9 primary -- R. Creigh Deeds, Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe -- have come calling. So has Robert F. McDonnell, the GOP's uncontested nominee.

In stump speeches, debates and bullet points, the city's 20.8 percent unemployment rate has become a set piece for a broader discussion of the state's recessionary woes.

What remains unclear to residents of Martinsville and similar textile towns across the industrial South is whether there is much of anything the politicians can do after the campaigns have passed by. Even President Obama, who toured Patrick Henry Community College's innovative motor sports training program in the fall with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine at his side, has not produced a prescription for the town's troubles.

Some have welcomed the public displays of concern.

"It's good if it helps bring attention to our situation," said Mark Heath, chief executive of the Martinsville-Henry County Economic Development Corp.

Others resent serving as human bunting for a candidate's whistle-stop.

"Of course all the politicians show up in bandwagons," said Danny Turner, 53, who, as a City Council member and onetime aide to a former U.S. representative, qualifies as a politician himself. "You come down here, you better bring something. We're not your poster child."

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What little Virginia's governors have been able to deliver for Martinsville is on display inside the massive building that once housed one of the city's biggest employers, Tultex Corp. The sewing machines are gone, as are the huge dye vats and the army of workers.

Ten years after the textile company went bust, the factory has been reborn as the Commonwealth Centre. Behind doors secured with retina scanners is the murmur of a state-run calling center with almost 100 employees equipped with headsets and multiple computer screens.

Their work? Dealing with child support payments.

John Hale, project manager for YoungWilliams, the firm operating the center under contract with Virginia, said workers earn $9.37 an hour and deal mostly with calls from noncustodial parents who are behind in their payments.

There are other tenants. Kirsten Dalton's company, Hoppity Doodle, evolved from selling children's clothing on eBay. Now Dalton, 40, sells decals to decorate homes, employing 10 people and generating more than $1 million a year. Hers is the sort of company the building's owner believes will rebuild the city, little by little.

"This complex isn't going to get filled by one operator, the way it got emptied," said Douglas Walsh, 41, general manager at Lester Properties. "The jobs left overnight, but they're not coming back overnight."

Local officials see the call center as a bright spot. And yet, across town, another call center is closing. The consolidation by GSI Commerce, whose clients include Calvin Klein and Dove Chocolate, will leave 279 people without work.

"There's nothing in this town," said Jeanie Moore, 59, who leaves the call center June 22. Her résumé reads like a chronology of the city's economic skid: Laid off as an art teacher in the public schools, she tended bar, took some nursing classes and then learned basic computer skills for an office job that never came through. After time as a retail clerk at Wal-Mart and Family Dollar, she found the call center.

"I'm mostly thinking about going to school," Moore said.

If there is an original sin here, it's that Martinsville did to New England's textile industry what the Third World is doing to it: offering cheap, nonunion labor to lure other people's jobs.

The first big textile mill, Pannill Knitting, set up shop in Martinsville in 1925. Wartime demand for textiles nearly doubled the population of a city that proclaimed itself "The Sweatshirt Capital of the World."

"Believe it or not, we used to have a traffic problem," said City Council member Mark C. Stroud Sr.

Then came the North American Free Trade Agreement, which in 1994 lifted trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada. More than 9,000 jobs vanished in an eight-year period beginning in 1996. When textilemaker Tultex declared bankruptcy in December 1999, 1,100 people landed on the street in a single day.

By last year, the city's population dropped to 14,453, about where it was before World War II.

Their misery brought lots of company.

* * *

During one of three swings through the city this year, McAuliffe offered to pay for a new high school gym with his own money.

"Everywhere he goes, he mentions Martinsville," said campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith.

Moran has stopped by at least five times. Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, has made a dozen visits since 2008. McDonnell has dropped by four times in the past two years.

This is a pattern that seems to repeat itself every time an office is up for grabs. Whether it benefits the region is less clear.

"I'm sure people in Martinsville want to see a little more than lip service," said Ed Anthony, an instructor at Patrick Henry Community College's Virginia Motorsports Technology Center. "They hear promises, promises, promises. But nothing really happens."

And yet, Anthony, whose program is one of the few bright spots in the region, said he understands the limits of political intervention.

"I don't expect the government to fix what's already happened," Anthony said. "That's the past."

Kaine (D) has earned some residents' respect with programs that look forward. He visited this month to celebrate an inaugural class at the New College Institute, a distance-learning center in a renovated department store that allows students to obtain credit at the University of Virginia and other institutions via high-tech hookups.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D), who sponsored a truck in a local NASCAR race during his successful gubernatorial bid, went so far as to say that his legacy should be judged by what he did for Martinsville.

Warner's initiatives included a push for NASCAR-related investments that dovetailed with the Virginia Motorsports Technology Center. The college's two-year program in automotive design and mechanics opened in 2000 with 12 students and has grown to accommodate more than 100.

But the number of racing teams that have relocated to Martinsville has been small.

Warner also helped bring MZM to Martinsville. Using $500,000 in state money, half of it from the national tobacco settlement, Warner's administration teamed with Goode to recruit the District-based defense contractor. What Warner and Goode did not know was that MZM's owner had paid bribes to Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.). The company failed, and Martinsville had to repay part of the subsidies.

It would help, several officials said, if politicians stopped trying to recreate the Martinsville of yore.

"I think people realize now we can't duplicate what the last hundred years was like," said Allyson K. Rothrock, executive director of the Harvest Foundation in Martinsville. "I really look at this as an opportunity for rebirth."