Matt Coffay, a grassroots organizer and former farmer, is hoping to lead a progressive wave of change in Western North Carolina. This past weekend, he announced his intent to challenge U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows for the state's 11th House district seat.

At a rally Tuesday outside the Henderson County Courthouse hosted by Progressive Organized Women, Coffay told a crowd of about 100 that during the campaign, he won't spend all his time on the phone tying himself to big donors and their interests. Instead of building his campaign on the maximum personal donations of $2,700, he said, he'll be looking for donations of $27.

Infrastructure, jobs, education and health care were the focus of his remarks. Coffay says he supports a $15 minimum wage, health care for all, free public college and investment in infrastructure and jobs.

A native of Blue Ridge, Ga., 30-year-old Coffay traveled around some after college, he said, but has been back home in Southern Appalachia for the past decade.

For the past few years, he's been a full-time farmer, working 80 hours a week to grow a variety of vegetables on a small farm for direct sales to consumers and restaurants. He's now with the National Young Farmers' Coalition, where he works with chapters nationwide to advance federal policy to make it easier for young people to become farmers.

Basically there's an agriculture crisis across the nation, Coffay said. The average age of American farmers is now 60 years old, continuing an upward trend that's not showing any signs of turning around.

He started the local chapter of OurRevolution, a progressive political organization that formed after the presidential election. The chapter, OurRevolutionAVL, out of Asheville, grew quickly. Coffay said he's been told by national organizers that it has developed into one of the top two or three largest and most active chapters in the country.

When the organization got to the point where it was looking for candidates to run for local office, he was approached as a good choice for the 11th, thanks to his background as a young farmer and being a native of the area and a good organizer.

At first, Coffay said he laughed at the "preposterous" idea, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt that a person like him is exactly what the country needs in Washington, D.C.

Congress is mostly populated by rich lawyers, he said, something the vast majority of the nation is not. Half the country earns less than $15 an hour, he said, and what's needed in Congress are people who understand what it's like to work really hard and want to fight on behalf of the working class.

Last Sunday, at a rally promoting Medicare for All, Coffay officially announced that he'll be running on the Democratic ticket against Meadows in 2018. He hopes to unseat the congressman, who has quickly gained traction in Washington and wields influence as the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Meadows during his time in Washington has been credited with shutting down the government and stopping the American Health Care Act, the recent Republican bid to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Coffay's encouraged, however, by the recent special elections in Kansas and Georgia, where Democratic candidates gained ground in traditionally Republican districts. He said he hopes the same factors fueling those campaigns can help his candidacy gain steam in the deeply red NC-11.

In Georgia, John Ossoff, another 30-year-old Democratic congressional hopeful, just won 48 percent of the vote in a special election, almost crossing the 50-percent threshold that would have prevented a June runoff. In Kansas, Democratic candidate Jim Thompson faced a similar situation, losing to Republican Kansas State Treasurer Ron Estes by just six points.

Another race Coffay mentioned is the Montana special election for the House, where Democratic candidate Rob Quist is gaining momentum and funding.

All three races were caused by President Donald Trump appointing the Republican incumbent to administration posts, and Coffay says all three are interesting.

"All three races demonstrate that all bets are off at this point," Coffay said, noting that the midterms following a presidential election tend to favor the opposing party. But with Trump and Meadows, Coffay sees special cases.

Last November, Meadows handily defeated his Democratic opponent, Rick Bryson, 64 percent to 36 percent. In 2014, Meadows defeated his previous opponent, Tom Hill, by just a slightly smaller margin: 63 percent to 37 percent.

But in 2018, Coffay he aims to boost voter turnout, and has veteran team members who have worked on congressional campaigns around the country and in the South. Staff members are already working to make connections with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He noted that the DCCC did not get behind Thompson in his race, though he still performed well, but the DCCC did get behind Ossof, who nearly won the special election outright. The Montana race is somewhere in between.

If the DCCC wants to get involved in a conservative district in a southern congressional race, Coffay says this is a good one to get involved in, but he's not sure if the committee will want to back such a progressive candidate.

There's potential for big funding, according to consultants and others the campaign has talked to, Coffay said, depending on how the campaign does over the next year. That's what the campaign is banking on — a successful grassroots campaign, and if they can be successful there, larger forces may come into play.

Coffay says he intends to raise more than $1 million, which would eclipse the $48,000 raised by Bryson and the $15,300 raised by Hill, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. In the two-year period from Jan. 1, 2015 to Dec. 31, 2016, the FEC shows Meadows reported about $659,000 in receipts.

"What we need is massive infrastructure investment" in Western North Carolina, Coffay said, to bring immediate benefit to the people and create long-term jobs. He specifically mentioned the lack of broadband in rural areas, asking how one can expect large businesses to want to come to an area without even internet.

"Also, when it comes to jobs, we need to stand up and say loudly and clearly, 'It's time to raise the minimum wage,'" he said. He called the current rate of $7.25 an hour a "starvation wage," and said the minimum wage should be raised to $15 per hour.

As for education, Coffay says North Carolina's per-pupil spending is abysmal and schools that are underfunded can't be expected to perform well. Something also has to be done about college affordability, he said. If the wealthiest people in the country start paying their fair share, there's no reason the country can't have tuition-free public college, he added.

When it comes to health care, Meadows is taking the wrong approach, Coffay says.

"At the end of the day, what everybody needs is just quality, affordable health care," he said.

People like Meadows think that deregulating the health insurance industry will somehow make insurance very affordable, Coffay said, calling that approach absurd because the health care marketplace doesn't follow the same laws of economics that other markets like automobiles do, because the demand for healthcare is unlimited. He pushes for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system.

"The moral thing to do is to guarantee health care for everybody," regardless of background or income, he said.

At the end of the day, the debate about repeal and replace needs to go a different direction, he said, toward single-payer. He cited a May 2016 Gallup poll showing that 58 percent of respondents said they would favor replacing the ACA with a federally funded health care program providing insurance for all Americans. Thirty-seven percent said they would oppose such a measure.