Here’s an excerpt from the Asheville Citizen-Times article:
If you shop at the farmer’s market, hike at the N.C. Arboretum or attend any number of events at the WNC Agricultural Center, you are benefiting from the work of Sen. Martin Nesbitt.
If your children are in public school in Buncombe County, they have modern facilities because of Nesbitt’s efforts. If you have attended a college or community college in the last decade in North Carolina, you have benefited from his leadership.
While these examples are some of the more sweeping accomplishments of his 35 years in the state House and Senate, Nesbitt always had an eye out for the little guy. He is credited with getting older cars exempt from new emissions standards knowing that most people who drove them could not afford to buy cleaner catalytic converters. He did it even though he knew those cars were the worst polluters.
Years later, he would take big industry to task for air quality with the Clean Smokestacks Act.
A contradiction? No, according to people who knew him. That was just his way. He was a mountain populist from beginning to end.
Nesbitt died Thursday after a brief battle with stomach cancer. He was 67.
He was working until almost the end on policy and politics.
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