Fifty-one year-old Greg Marston wants to represent the 61st District in the Virginia House of Delegates.

The Democrat, who lives in Crewe, is opposing Republican incumbent Thomas C. Wright Jr.

“I have tried over the years to work with my opponent on some different issues, and for whatever the reason, we’ve never been able to connect the dots on anything,” the retired railroad employee said when asked why he was running.

The district encompasses Amelia, Cumberland, Mecklenburg, Nottoway counties and a portion of Lunenburg county.

Marston, who describes himself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, said his decision to run for office was based on the state legislature not approving Medicaid expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act.

“That is something that as Virginians we are paying the federal taxes to have that expansion here,” he said. Marston said the money was going elsewhere instead of staying in Virginia.

Many eligible for the expansion are disabled veterans, state employees, bus drivers and cafeteria workers, he said.

His number one campaign issue is jobs, Marston said, wearing a t-shirt supportive of industrial hemp — a concept that he’s in favor of legalizing in Virginia to create jobs and enhance the economy.

He said that the states that were once tobacco kings, such as Virginia, are now looking back to hemp for help. The industry would spike jobs in the 61st District, he said, noting that over 50,000 products are manufactured from the crop.

Education is another issue that Marston wants to tackle. He says it’s disturbing to him that a correctional inmate in Nottoway has access to HVAC training while a high school student doesn’t. “That bothers me a lot. We’re putting money on the wrong side of the thing.”

He said he favors apprenticeships and trade school programming.

“We lock up entirely too many people,” he said, referring to the number of inmates in correctional centers and jails.

Marston also favors increasing the minimum wage to over $10 an hour. “You can’t keep people in poverty and not take care of them,” he said.

Marston thinks the government will always spend money on education, the poor and the incarcerated, “but we’ve got to look at doing it better. Some things need to be put on the front end first and certainly [with] education, it makes a lot more sense to teach a kid to be an HVAC person than it does to try to [teach] an inmate.”

Regarding his social liberalism and his fiscal conservatism, he said, “Everybody has good ideas, but state government, particularly, has no credit card. The first thing with any idea, no matter how good it is, you’ve got to show how you’re going to pay for it. And that’s going to be my whole position with my constituency.”

If elected, Marston says he’d propose tax breaks for those who volunteer within the community. He also said he’d like to see the state and federal tax codes rewritten. Marston favors non-partisan redistricting as well.

The candidate said he’d like to see the Business, Professional and Other License (BPOL) tax eliminated.

“One word about this campaign I think would be … fair … Our government, our social issues, our employment practices, everything we need to do it just needs to be fair.”

The election is Nov. 3.